Re: Content management

I've seen one very heavy-duty example of a completely web-based site development tool. This was done in ASP, VB and SQL Server (I think) but could be done with open source tools. However, they've put many people-years into the project. Every site resides on the ASP's (using the other meaning of ASP now) server. I know this isn't what you're looking for, but I found the structure that they use informative. The trick for this tool is that nearly EVERYTHING seems to be in a database field - I don't think there was any existing page of HTML. Every item on a page (a story, a picture, a form) is stored in SQL. Even each form element appears to be a separate record in a database - there's probably a table called 'forms' in which one defines the NAME, ACTION, etc of a form and another called 'elements' with an ident for the form, then what sort of element it is: INPUT, SELECT, etc - and all of the parameters for that one line. If it IS a SELECT element then there appears to be another table that holds each OPTION as a separate record. It's possible to reorder each option inside a choice list, and each element inside a form, and each portion of a page (the form being one) inside the layout of that page in general - so each element of the larger item must receive an ordinal number as well. The ASP tool they've built is hugely complex - but they've built it to handle _everything_ (you can tinker with HTML if you feel the need) - and for many, many websites at the same time. I'm hoping to take a little of this a build a single site that will handle _something_. Nelson At 5:07 PM -0500 9/10/01, Michael Champagne wrote:

I am looking for something like this as well. We are not looking at developing our own interface but maybe going with something like eGrail or Vignette? I'm not too familiar with the pros and cons of these. Which heavy duty content management system is best from a PHP-friendly standpoint? Thanks, Hi All-

I am developing a web interface for a school that will allow them to mange the entire site, from users to the actual display elements. The trick has been, they must not have to know HTML to do the administration. The question: does anyone have some links or examples of this kind of system from a layout perspective, even functionality. I want to deliver something they can

really use.

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