CMS - Alfresco, Magnolia, Drupal and Joomla Comparison - drupal

I am comparing Alfresco, Magnolia & Joomla especially specific to following features:
a. Ease of Integration of user created templates.
b. JCR (JSR-170?) or CMIS compliance.
c. Scalability in architecture.
d. Mobile site deployment.
I used cmsmatrix.org to compare features but I could not get some of the specific information related to above mentioned points.
Any insights based on your experience on working with one or more of the above CMS products will be helpful.
Thanks,
Krish.

While these four products are branded as CMS I don't think they are really comparable. Drupal and, for what I know, Joomla are web publishing CMS (or WCMS), they are designed to create web sites and manage their content. They are not designed as generic CMS, DMS or ECM. Alfresco, and probably Magnolia, are ECM/DMS designed to manage enterprise contents.
For instance, while manageable in Drupal (given enough effort and custom PHP code), complex multi-states multi-actor workflow for multilingual documents (PDF, Office, etc.) are probably easier to manage with Alfresco. And Alfresco is probably not suitable to manage web content with lightweight publishing workflow and user generated content.
Having the managed content published on a web site does not means it has to be managed by the same tools that the one used to manage the web site. For instance, using the Drupal CMIS module, you can bridge it with Alfresco (or any CMIS compliant ECM) to manage your enterprise content in the suitable tools but publish parts of it on a Drupal site.

Summarizing inputs I received here along with what I found in my search from various discussions so far (thanks #mongolito404 and bkraft).
For web content management features - Drupal / Joomla is recommended.
For Enterprise Content Management / Document Management features with minimal web publishing features - Alfresco / Magnolia is recommended.
For specific requirements the best of different tools can be used - Drupal to publish web content via CMIS support. Alfresco as solution for workflow & document management.
Alfresco already supports & continues to have CMIS in product roadmap (contributes to CMIS community).
Drupal is CMIS compliant (OOTB) with strong web content capability.
Leveraging best of both (Alfresco & Drupal) could also be one of the options depending on the requirement. Refer: http://www.optaros.com/blogs/drupal-alfresco-integration#
Another interesting option seems to be Liferay (v6+ specifically) with their CMIS integration capability: http://www.liferay.com/web/jonas.yuan/blog/-/blogs/integrating-alfresco-through-cmis-in-liferay
Thanks,
Krish.

Can't speak for the others, but from Magnolia's perspective, ease of integration is certainly a core feature. It runs on the Java platform, so integration is a given from the platform side. In addition Magnolia has been rated the most flexible CMS on the market today by independent analyst Tony White of Ars Logica download his free report (always worth a read, and other reports are also available).
JCR: Magnolia is based on JCR, and was so since the first line of code
CMIS: not implemented yet, but planned for Magnolia 5 to be shipped late this year
Scalability: Magnolia's got it covered. See our case studies
Mobile site deployment: again, comes naturally to Magnolia thanks to its architecture and rich out of the box functionality.
Regards
- Boris

Update: CMIS is available as a community module since Magnolia v4.5

Related

Microsoft Dynamics Integration with Magnolia

We need Magnolia 5.5 integration with Microsoft Dynamics(CRM) but as per the following magnolia documentation the integration is not available out of the box with Magnolia. Magnolia Documentation
How can we build that functionality in Magnolia, please advice.
Thanks in advance..
All depends on what kind of API Dynamics exposes for such integration. And what features of Dynamics exactly do you want to integrate.
If there is any REST based API, you can have a look at similar integrations (those for SugarCRM, Eloqua or SalesForce come to my mind) and do what needs to be done. Source code for the above integrations provided by Magnolia is AFAIK available to all Enterprise customers.
Typically you have two parts of the integrations
- backend one where you create content connector for an app and the app directly to allow your editors to interact and select items from Dynamics, and
- some templating functions that allow templates to understand items previously selected by the editors and retrieve those from Dynamics when rendering the template.
- typically you will also have to deal somehow with authentication between Magnolia and Dynamics and (unless all is super fast) with caching items retrieved from Dynamics in Magnolia in some form of volatile cache.
But really, any more details on what to do and how depends on the use case. It would be different for building customer self service portal and for e.g. just listing phone number of the sales/support rep closest to visitor of the site based on geolocation.

Orchard CMS Virto e-commerce module

I developed previous web-applications with Orchard CMS and I enjoyed working with it. Now I started to create an E-commerce application and found out that Orchard has some modules for this so installed the Virto-commerce module but I'm starting to notice the lack of functionalities.
For example I can not figure out (lack of documentation) how to place attribute filters on de products page. Is it even possible?
Can the module be used to create a fully functional webshop like http://demo.virtocommerce.com/electronics/camcorders or is it very limited with just basic functionally?
The module for CMS Orchard is really simple and was developed only for demo-purposes - just to show that it is possible to use VirtoCommerce API with Orchard. So, for now this module has very limited functionality - only placing widgets on corresponding pages - and can not be used for creating a real-world e-commerce web site.
Actually we are open for your suggestions about integration VirtoCommerce and CMS Orchard.

Which are limits of Community version of the eZ Publish CMS?

I am currently looking for informations about eZ Publish Community version and its limits to develop a public portal.
Furthermore:
Can I use Oracle database? Should I prefer ezoracle to any Symfony extension?
Can I integrate an antivirus solution? If yes which one?
Can I use 2 different instances, one to write and export contents, and another one to import and update contents?
Which newsletter system do you suggest?
Is back-end IE8 and IE9 compatible?
Can I (de)activate contact forms on demand?
Can I integrate a more powerful anti-spam solution than visual CAPTCHA? (ex: reCAPTCHA)
Can the webmaster modify layout elements, such as logos, bannes, aso.
Thank you for your help!
Latest community version is using Doctrine DBAL (through new stack) which supports Oracle. But so far there is no information that someone tried it as the Doctrine support is quite new. ezoracle extension is a legacy extension which might be used but not if new stack is being utilised.
Anti-virus solutions are not something that makes sense to integrate with CMS-es. Those are either client software (CMS runs on web servers) or server side software which is installed on the web server and monitors uploaded files.
You probably describe a content staging kind of setup for which there is no out-of-the-box solution. But the CMS is quite flexible and some solution could be possible to develop.
Solid and integrated one is the cjw_newsletter, but its legacy based. There is nothing similar in the new stack, there might be some Symfony based bundles that could be integrated but would require some development effort. Depends on the integration needed. If not much integration is needed external services are an option
Legacy admin interface is, for the new editor UI which is under development at the moment I am not sure what will be the oldest IE supported. IE8 probably not, maybe just with graceful degradation.
If you mean legacy collected info based forms yes. You can hide the node of the forms for example. In new stack there are no similar implementation yet.
Yes, although it would probably require some web development knowledge. If you use legacy collected info forms you can try to install some of the existing legacy extension that deal with that (e.g. http://projects.ez.no/recaptcha) but to do it in new stack (Symfony based) you will probably need to dig deeper with Symfony Forms and custom controllers or find and integrate bundles that implement this
This depends on how the front-end is implemented. If done properly it should be possible, yes
For more detailed help feel free to use the community forum: http://share.ez.no/forums/ez-publish-5-platform

Architecture for Web-App development aimed at aiding interoperability between CMS systems. Has it been done?

I'm thinking about attempting to design a new framework architecture aimed at allowing a web app to later be easily ported into a system such as Drupal or Joomla while maintaining the independence of the original app such that updates to core functionality would require only one release or otherwise minimal extra work.
Before I start on this however, I would like to see what work has previously been done that comes closest to what I am proposing. So an answer to this question would come in the form of a reference to the most similar work or if possible a definitive 'no' that this has not been done before.
Clarification by example: MediaWiki is a common web app that has become one of the most highly recommended of its kind. However, site admins building their sites with Drupal would be required to hack MediaWiki in order for it to play nicely with Drupal in terms of sharing a user base for example. Imagine that MediaWiki has decided to do a complete rebuild of their system, what design could be used to make this interaction simply require a Drupal module or Joomla component and thus make MediaWiki available to more users?
I'm using MediaWiki as just an example, I think modules and components already exist that solve this particular problem but I hope I am able to get my idea across. It is a problem I have encountered many times during web development now that CMS systems are appearing more and more enterprise-like.
Thanks!
godwin
Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is an OASIS Specification that you can use to imrprove the data portability and interoperability of a CMS. If your system has (or your provide) a CMIS interface, you can move content to / from other CMS systems that also provide CMIS interfaces.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cmis

What's a good CMS for an intranet site?

I know this question has been tossed around by many developers and designers. I just got finished with my companies intranet site using joomla 1.5 with a custom bulit template and modifying almost everything in joomla. It got me thinking if I should be using an enterprise CMS instead of an free open source CMS. I almost went with wordpress, but the company wanted joomla for there site. It was a great for me to jump into another CMS and learn, but is there a better CMS out there that meant for intranet or does it really matter at all?
Try OpenAtrium, its free.
http://www.openatrium.com
If you're planning an intranet project using a CMS, then you'll need to clarify a couple of requirements before choosing the right one. I have a blog post with some simple choices for choosing a cms for an intranet, more specifically on collaboration and community features. But other more basic requirements are:
Is there a technology stack that the organization prefers/uses? Does it need to be on-premise or cloud based? This will filter down the candidates
Is the Intranet for just posting read-only notices and information, or are community features (groups, lists, news feeds, etc)
Does the Intranet require SSO so that organization members can seamlessly interact with content based on their identity?
What sort of budget is available for the Intranet? All CMS installs have a cost, even the ones without any subscription cost.
Is document and file management an important requirement?
Are customizations needed for any specific Intranet functionality or connectivity to other systems?
Wordpress will do a simple intranet well, but will start to become more work if you start getting complex requirements around authentications, groups and social functionality. If on the LAMP stack and looking for more complex requirements, look at Drupal or Joomla. On the Windows/.NET side there have been suggestions in this answer already - the choices span from full commercial answers such as Sharepoint to those available open source and commercially licensed like Dnn.
Nowadays everything is called a CMS - tools to maintain websites, advanced portals, wiki's, and so on. The requirements for a "CMS" are drastically different for intranets and public websites, however.
Intranets usually have a high level of interaction, lot's of user generated content, different content types, and so on. More users need to be able to login to the system (basically everyone, not just the content editors) with different levels of authorization and different roles in general. Collaboration in general is much more important than with an average "public" CMS based website.
Furthermore you will usually want different types of plugins. Google analytics and SEO are much less important, you'd be more interested in some active user plugin, recent publications, integration with other internal tools (i.e. project management) and possibly exposing other datasources (databases, telephone directories, filesystems with internal documents), and so on.
In my personal experience, Plone is a good choice. It provides most of the above out of the box or through existing extensions and it has excellent integration possibilities with external systems. Cyn.in also provides a somewhat completer plone based solution.
If Plone's too much for you, you could consider some wiki-like system, such as TWiki or MediaWiki
As others have said, it will depend on your requirements.
If you are looking for something more in the enterprise space, then elcomCMS might be a good fit - it's .NET based though (not sure if that rules it out in your case), but has an API and other dev considerations.
Pretty strong as both a web CMS and an intranet.
http://www.elcomcms.com/Product/elcomCMS-Overview/Intranets
I have user long time drupal, but now I switching to WordPress it's much easier, if you don't want to create a community or something like this.

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