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6. Content Management Systems
One of the issues that must be investigated is the use of an integrated content management system. The term Content Management System is used for a wide variety of products such as the commercial products Vignette and Websphere or free products Zope and AOLServer. These have an equally wide variety of capabilities, but tend to include the following components:
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Document templates
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A scripting language and/or a markup language
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Integration with a database
The basic idea behind a CMS is to separate the management of content from design. Page designs are stored in templates while the content may be stored in a database or separate files. When a user requests a web page, the parts are combined to produce a standard HTML page. The resultant web page may include content from multiple sources. For instance, a page describing a workshop might have, as a sidebar, a list of all the other workshops on this year along with the standard navigation and title bar at the top.
The inclusion of content is controlled by the use of special tags in pages. These tags are often unique to a CMS. There is usually support for languages such as Python, Perl, or Java for more complex operations.
The ATNF's Epping site currently has a very basic CMS with the use of server side includes and Perl and JavaScript for scripting. The CSIRO Corporate site uses a far more sophisticated setup with a combination of XML, Microsoft IIS and SQL server.
6.1 CMS Advantages
A CMS can be used to ensure consistency across a website. Responsibility for the appearance of the web pages is removed from the content authors and centralised. This also simplifies maintenance of the site. More advanced CMS's offer additional security benefits, site management tools, simplified form and database handling and search and indexing facilities. These can reduce the time spend of development of individual components of the website.
6.2 Issues
The standardisation imposed by a CMS can reduce the flexibility of the website. Authors may desire more control over the design of individual web pages. There may also be incompatibility issues over the use of the CMS in conjunction with other web applications or scripts. Many ATNF pages were created using programs such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, LaTeX2HTML or Netscape Composer. These programs have little to no support for the special tags or formats that are required by the CMS. It is desirable that a CMS be extendable and able to cope with future technological developments, especially XML.
CMS's often use a browser interface to update pages. Text or HTML is entered into a form in a browser window and published from there to the website/CMS. This has the benefit of a consistent interface for page creation and remote access. However, the author may be constrained by the lack of a WYSIWYG environment.
The use of CMS specific tags in the HTML may mean an additional learning requirement for page authors, although most pages will contain minimal additional code. It should also be remembered that the ATNF already uses special code in the form of server side includes and that Perl script is used throughout the website.
6.3 Suitability of Using a CMS
As mentioned previously, the ATNF already uses a basic CMS. The questions are whether we operate the entire site through a CMS and if we should use a currently available product or develop our own system. The criteria for evaluating the potential of a CMS should be:
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Is it flexible enough to cope with the range of content on the ATNF website?
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Can the system handle non-CMS generated pages?
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Does it simplify form-handling and dynamic content?
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How simple is it to program web applications using the supported scripting languages?
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Are the CMS specific tags easy for ATNF authors to use?
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What site management benefits does the CMS provide?
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How future-proof is the CMS?
If a CMS is designed internally it will probably use a combination of SQL database (PostgreSQL or MySQL), PHP and Perl and may not be as comprehensive as alternative products. One answer may be to use one CMS for a limited section of the site such as news or administration, and our own solution for the remainder of the website. Other combinations are also possible.
A search of product information on the web has already eliminated a number of existing CMS's. Remaining products will be tested, where possible, against the above criteria before a final decision is made.