open source CMS temtation

I’ve been asked allot about the various open source content managment systems lately. The list keeps growoing and its hard to know if the market is really growing or if there are now so many specific uses that all these new distributions are actually filling real needs.

Yes I’ve ‘worked’ with several dozen of them. no actually they. tended to work ON me.. or not to work at all. The question I have is ‘for what?’ or what do you need them to do?. I mean what ‘things’ do you want it to do? I’ve been a regular visitor of the CmsMatrix about 3 maybe four years and that list keeps growing.

I know there is a common belief out there that Google somehow knows or cares that related sites are made of the same construction framework. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again just to hear myself type. There is no benefit in terms of search visibility or anything else search related to masking or differentiating your construction framework. Installing things just to be different has no value. Its like your IP address . Honestly there are SO many other issues and hard things to get right that really do matter and are too numerous to actually accomplish stabbing at stuff with zero provable or objectively provable benefit is clearly a waste of resources, time , energy. It leaves you very vulnerable to being engulfed in the minutia that is the quicksand of this business.

I know I sound like I’m being contrary. I’m not. I just want you to have the best advice I can offer.

That being said if you want to see stuff that is very extensible and totally powerful go to http://www.apache.org/foundation/ and look in the left column. Find Geronimo, Cocoon and Lenya among others. Now there is something different and possibly providing solutions to needs Drupal cannot. But until you know what they are — the needs — they just don’t exist.

Lastly you can install all this stuff and more you have the weaker you abilities to manage and more spread your managements focus becomes. There is absolutely no benefit to installing and using various CMS unless you clearly have a need that isn’t being met that will be fulfilled by the newly introduced things. If you can articulate the need specifically enough then it can be done by any of them by the way. That’s the crux of the matter really. Some are easier to work with than others.

If you want to install stuff to see what it can for shear research do that is different. Look at the Drupal contributed module directory for the most complete available archive of things that can be done and have actually been done. It will save you time.