Hi there,

I've been hapily using XOOPS for over two years, and I was wondering how it compares to the competition, especially Zope based CMS like Plone.

Has anybody used Plone and XOOPS who can make a comparison? I would be interested to know your experiences and how the products compare?

Thanks,

Andy

I have tried Plone - but couldn't really figure it out.

Also, since I don't know Python it is very hard for me to do any changes, should I want that.

I've actually used Plone for perhaps 2 years now (as a producer/pm), and am strongly considering a transition to XOOPS.

In response to your questions, Plone runs on python, with pages built via a special markup called TAL, so there might be some new languages for you to learn. I think Plone is also a lot more feature-rich and generic, making the learning curve a lot steeper. Like XOOPS it has a strong developer community with active newsgroups and some Plone-specific books published (if you're really interested, I've been hearing good things about Andy McKay's recent Plone book).

As far as I can tell, XOOPS does not support easy content type generation or workflow controls (both are standard in Plone) - can anyone verify?

Thanks
Chris

Thanks Chris, you are just the kinda guy I wanted to hear from!

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Can you please explain exactly what is meant by "content type generation" and "workflow controls"? It might be something to consider building into WF-SECTION.

Thanks,

Andy

Plone is a CMS in the classic sense of the term. You have a website, you have text and images on the pages of your website. You don't want to have to edit the web pages directly in order to update content, plus you want to be able to push ownership and editing responsibilities to other people besides the technical webmaster.

So you user a Content Management System to edit and update the content on the web pages without actually editing the web pages. A good CMS has workflow controls and strong role-based permissions for different users (can edit, can publish, can add new content, etc). And a good one will differentiate between different types of content (text, images, certain kinds of text (intros, body text, tables, etc), and even let you create new types to suit your needs.

A good CMS also has versioning control, so you can go back in time and see what a page looked like last week or last month because all versions of all content are stored, along with the identity of the user who made the change.

XOOPS has none of that. But WF-Sections, or another module, could be built that would give people the ability to have true CMS-like features in XOOPS.

Unlike Plone, XOOPS is a plug-in driven portal framework. Lately people have been pushing the term CMS to include such things as XOOPS, but a couple years ago, you never would have heard that use of the term.

XOOPS is good at giving you a way to bring different users together into groups, and providing the users with different ways of interacting with each other and with content (ie: through modules).

Plone is really bad at that. Plone doesn't even have the ability to put users into groups the same way XOOPS does. If all your users are just sitting in "registered users" or you only care about anonymous users, then the lack of groups support may not matter to you. But for anyone concerned about certain groups having access to certain stuff, and certain other groups having access to certain other stuff, Plone can't do it.

The two systems are really quite different, and each is very good at what it was designed to do.

Personally, I would like to see a module in XOOPS that let you manage content in a separate website, rather than controlling the look and content of pages inside XOOPS.

We have clients who use XOOPS for their "private" intranet style sites, and who also have public sites for which they need CMS features. Why not continue to leverage the XOOPS portal they have invested in, and turn it into, among other things, a control panel for managing their public website's content?

Give it a year or so, maybe we'll release such a module ourselves if there's enough interest on the part of clients.

--Julian

I have seriously been considering developing a true CMS module for Xoops. As I get into higher end clients, I find myself in need of something beyond what things like wf-sections, and other modules, can provide. I may have to bite the bullet and develop something to provide this functionality... if I ever get the time that is. :)

Hi Jegelstaff,

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Thanks for the info on Plone. Groups *do* matter to me. Is that really true about lack of groups in Plone? That amazes me!

Andy

Draven,

Your site is amazing! Have you developed other sites?

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No!!! You should seriously consider helping the WF-Section team. They need lots of help, and their vision is for a high-end CMS module. You could contribute a lot of good ideas and code. How's about it?

Andy

[Mostly in response to Andy, but might be relevant to others...]

I evaluated Plone along with a whole bunch of other systems for a client a few months ago. At the time, I was looking for reasons to eliminate a candidate system (since I had so many to look at), so my analysis was not exactly thorough, but it was the groups issue that I latched onto with Plone, and tried to verify in order to eliminate it.

As far as I could tell, from fiddling with the system and reading the docs, Plone has groups, as in an Editors group and a Publishers group and other groups like that, tied to the role of users in the workflow/content production process. They were really permission containers, rather than content containers, whereas XOOPS groups are permission and content containers.

There was no ability to create ad hoc groups of users, like in XOOPS, and control what content those groups have access to.

Someone with more knowledge of Plone could confirm, but I am pretty certain about this. Plone and XOOPS really are trying to accomplish very different things.

I would venture a guess that you could build something Plone-like inside XOOPS (as a module) but you could not build XOOPS inside Plone.

The more appropriate comparison would probably be between XOOPS and Zope. Zope is the framework within which Plone was built. Zope is more of a pure API than XOOPS though; Plone is not a module inside Zope, Plone is an application built on top of Zope. It's more like the relationship of an application to an operating system than the relationship of a XOOPS module to XOOPS.

I hope this helps,

--Julian

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Yes, quite a few actually.

http://www.fantasyasylum.com
http://www.mobilemarketingroadshow.com
http://www.mobilemarketingcanada.com
http://www.fantasyref.com
http://mockdrafts.com/ (seems this one has been altered and the middle content removed)


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Unfortunately, I think trying to convert WF-sections to a true CMS module would involve far to much hacking and work arounds, starting fresh is a better approach IMO.

That's not to say pieces of WF-sections can't be used, but I think WF-sections is to far along to accomidate the nature of the system I invision.