[Boulder.pm] Perl-based CMSes

[Walter Pienciak]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 10:42:59PM -0800, David Nicholas Kayal wrote:
> Have you heard of the called Interchange?
> 
> http://www.icdevgroup.org/

No, I hadn't; thanks.

Last night's e-mail was deliberately vague; in retrospect, too
vague.

So here's a long and rambling version:

I have some responsibilities related to a web host that supports
a multitude of groups that are diverse in background and goals.
Their areas are maintained how they want, when they want, with
the style and functionality they want -- each group does its own
thing.

For lots of reasons, most of them good ones, a "CMS" will be
going up on that site for groups to use.  "CMS" means a lot of
things to different folks.  To some, it's an acronym for
solutions that provide simple templating for consistent look and
feel and easy administration.  To others, it's a whole
templating/portal/community functionality thing.  I expect to 
be throwing multiple tools onto the system for various groups to
play with and use.

So . . . this is a fricking HUUUUUGE application space we're
talking about.  Why an e-mail to you?

Well, the common language in my group is Perl.  If the killer app
is in another language, we can go that way, but Perl is the
default preference.

Most of us have gone down a common road:  We write a web app that
displays some web pages via simple print statements and explicit
HTML embedded in the code.  Pretty soon, abstractions and common
sense lead to simple templating tools (Text::Template, whatever).
Maybe we write one of the zillion templating systems out there,
with version control and other nifty and useful doodads.  (I have
one of those myself.)

If we work for a big company who can throw resources, maybe we
got involved with bigger efforts: amazon.com runs mason/mod_perl,
I think; classmates.com, something based on Text::Forge, etc.
etc.

And then there are worthy applications out there:  bricolage,
axkit, plone, krang, opencms, drupal, and on and ON.  And
websites that list them  (along with unworthy apps.)  And there
are the toolkits with *all kinds* of complexity and approach --
e.g., Template::Toolkit, HTML::Mason, bOP (Hi, Rob).

Hence my e-mail.  If you're using something that you really like,
I would like to hear that.  If you used somethat turned out to be
a bad fit, I'd be interested in hearing why.  Basically, if you
have *any* relevant experience you'd like to share, I'd be
interested in hearing it.  And I assumed that because we have
this mailing list, it would be interesting to a lot of people, if
only to file in your "when I get to that" file.

Plus the list has been (cough) quiet, and I'd like to change
that.

Anyway, happy Friday.

Walter