More CMS and Ajax - What About CDS?

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, September 27, 2006 @ 12:17 pm

We talked about CMS and Ajax back in June, so I thought it was about time to see what had transpired in the world of CMS. Back then, it seemed that the CMS side (Content Management, i.e. the part your editors and authors use) had the most immediate promise for using Ajax, but that the CDS side (Content Display, i.e. the part that the actual readers see) was a different matter, with lots of headaches for managing scripts, style sheets and interactions. In essence, the domain model for most of these CMS's out there does not account for the fine-grained interactions of Ajax on the CDS side.

So, what are some of the more noteworthy developments for CMS and Ajax? All of the commercial vendors I've checked with, Interwoven, etc., have either added or are planning to add Ajax to their CMS apps, but not CDS so far. Beyond that, here are some highlights:

1. MODx, a CMS and PHP application framework has been getting lots of press. The actual "Ajaxiness" of the app seems a little limited. And by their own admission, their focus is to introduce more of it into the CMS side, i.e. the "Manager" rather than the CDS. It does have "live search" and some Ajax powered voting, however.
   
   

   MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology thanks to script.aculo.us. Expect to see this grow more and more into our manager over time, but you can make use of it today in your own custom applications including live search, web effects, Ajax communications and more.

2. Micro CMS v.3.5 is a commercial CMS that also touts it's Ajax capabilities, again in the CMS side.
3. Skeletonz is another CMS where the manager interface features AJAX and the CDS does not. This one is written in Python.
4. MuraveyWeb, a Ruby on Rails CMS, seems to have closed up shop. The original files are still available on RubyForge.
5. MooFlex CMS Demo - just a demo at this point. Not much more info than the Ajaxian article. I'd expect a little more Ajax in the actual demo from the Mad4Milk crowd.
6. The Drupal CMS project has been busy adding Ajax to its CMS and CDS according to this levelheaded Ajax manifesto. They've settled on JQuery for their core Ajax library. They seem to be the most aggresive in adding real Ajax to the CDS, such as a real-time chat room. While we're on the topic of JQuery, check out the maiden issue of JQuery Magazine.
7. Ajax Fly is a add in to the Mambo/Joomla Open Source CMS.

So far, I like the looks of Drupal and its Ajax CDS integration. Overall, people seem to be doing rather than thinking. I expect some folks are in stage two of Joe Walker's 4 stages of Ajax Adoption -- progressive enhancement -- while others are already in state three -- the second site. Stay tuned for more on what is likely to be a fast changing Ajax CDS landscape.

Technorati : ajax, cms

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