[plug] Virtual Filesystems & CMS

[Mark J Gaynor]

Hey Trevor,

I have been looking at a CMS based web system for a little while now
and have been playig with "mysource" by Squiz. It is a fully lunctional
CMS that is much different than other bit of software that I have tried.

It is written in PHP and uses mysql as a data base. Have a look at it,
I know you don't like putting things in a database etc, but I think you 
would be surprised at what can be done with this software.

If nothing else, get the docs off the site and see what it can do. They
also have a commecial version of the same thing if you are interested.

http://www.squiz.net/mysource/functionality_checklist

Mark
--


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/06/2004 at 10:28 AM Trevor Phillips wrote:

>I'm after some words of wisdom, from anyone who may've had some
>experience in 
>this field. The situation is this: A large webserver, hosting dozens of 
>sites, with dozens of content providers. The "standard" configuration is
>to 
>give each user a UNIX account, and use groups to control write access,
>with 
>access through Samba & SFTP. This, however, is cumbersome, and has 
>scalability issues (can't cram "admin" or "multi-side consultants" into
>more 
>than 32 groups being the most annoying issue). It also offers no roll-back
>on 
>content versions.
>
>Desirable criteria not currently supported include: Access Control Lists 
>(instead of the inflexible User/Group/Other UNIX system), version control,

>efficiency, integratability into our existing Apache Magic.
>
>The higher-ups are trumpeting Content Management Systems - throw money at
>a 
>black box. Yay! Personally, I've found such solutions are more trouble
>than 
>they're worth, with more time spent trying to bend the system to do what
>used 
>to be simple. And I know for a fact that most of them won't integrate with

>some of our other technologies we depend upon (heavy-use of Apache
>mod_perl 
>layered content handlers).
>
>My preferred solution is to create something myself. However, we have
>limited 
>time resources, and there's always the "what if you get hit by a bus"
>issue 
>that managers like to bring up (which is a fair call). Alternatively, if 
>there are some cool technologies I can leverage to do the hard work, then 
>creating a custom system may be easier, and more robust, easier to
>maintain, 
>etc...
>
>So - what sort of technologies pre-existing could I leverage?
>
>I'd prefer NOT to keep actual content in a database. Tracking access &
>META 
>info in a DB is possible, but I'd prefer to keep "files" as files on a 
>filesystem. I mean, the filesystem is a DB optimised for the storage & 
>retrieval of files, is it not?
>
>Version control - how scalable and useful is an existing system (eg; 
>Subversion) to this sort of file repository? Thousands of files. Mostly
>HTML, 
>but with large pockets of binary files (images, PDFs). Is it worth using
>some 
>other system? Or should I just do my own? It wouldn't be too hard. Maybe
>have 
>a directory based on the file name, and store snapshot versions of the
>file 
>in the dir?
>
>Access - I could investigate ACLs at the Linux level - but why bother? If 
>people ONLY need access to edit content, then why give them a UNIX
>account, 
>which adds on other security concerns? I could do a custom WebDAV
>interface - 
>yet WebDAV seems like one of those cool-yet-underused & stale sort of 
>technologies. Or perhaps it's so basic it doesn't need upgrades? At least 
>it'd integrate nicely with the rest of Apache. But it may be a pain for 
>clients limiting access to WebDAV. Perhaps Apache 2 can help? I think I
>read 
>somewhere it can act like an FTP and/or SMB server?
>
>URI Transparency - One of my pet hates is Web-apps which pretend to be a 
>website, yet have the ugliest CGI-style URLs. Ugh! It's unnecessary!
>(Sorry - 
>bit of a Rant of mine.)
>
>Any thoughts/ideas? Or is this a field not really covered in-depth in
>Perth? 
>^_^
>
>-- 
>. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
>: Web Technical Administrator     -          T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
>| IT Services                        -              Murdoch University | 
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------<
>| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of     /
>| course. But mostly evil, on the whole.                             /
> \      -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)                          /
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