I want to create an enterprise intranet , that provides authentication of employees and management profiles, messaging, calendar, document management...
I think I can use php or java CMS , for the moment after some research I decided to use Liferay or Alfresco. The problem is that I don't really know the difference between them , and what I have to choose .
They're quite different products, solving different business needs.
Liferay
It's a Java Portal. It focuses on creating web sites that are able to integrate data coming from different sources and applications in the same page. Using portlets, you compose a page to enrich it with such mini applications. It's mostly used to create web sites that aggregate information and contain interactive features such as online chat, blogs and the like. It also provides document management as part of its features, with the possibility of integrating Alfresco as a backend.
Alfresco
It's an Enterprise Content Management system. It revolves around documents, their lifecycle and collaboration capabilities over such documents. With the advent of Share, Alfresco now offers a lightweight portal-like application that lets you place "dashlets" in both an User Dashboard and a Site Dashboard (sites are shared workspaces).
While you can have non-document centric dashlets, blogs and wikis, they're not extremely sophisticated, and most of Alfresco features focus on document management and online collaboration.
I have not worked with portals for quite a while, but I guess the answer is : It really depends. :)
Seriously, in your requirements context I would compare Alfresco Share with Liferay. Both compose pages in a similiar fashion with Webscripts/Portlets components and have security baked in.
I think the most important factor to consider is your skill set.
If you feel at home with Java, the Portlet spec and server side logic : Lean towards Liferay. Alfresco Share/Spring Surf should serve you better if you prefer Javascript in the browser and JSON/REST style programming.
Besides, validate how strong your document management requirements are.
Do you really need super sophisticated search, workflow, versioning, security and the like ?
Sophistication increases complexity. That is also why I would be careful before introducing them both at the same time.
Another point to have in mind may be documentation - guess this point goes to Liferay.
Liferay's primary strength is as a portal where you use existing "applications" to fit your need, or create your own using the Portlet spec. Alfresco is a CMS, so it focuses on content management.
Why not use both?
Related
Can we use ClouldScribe for non-content scenarios like Classifieds Posting?
Planning to develop a Classifieds Posting web application. Here I want to use cloudscribe's engine and another part (like add posting, listing, search) I will write on my own.Is it possible with cloudscribe or its overkill of cloudscribe ?
You can use cloudscribe Core for management of users, roles, claims etc and then build custom features for anything you need.
The idea is for cloudscribe to provide some things so you don't have to build them yourself, ie user management and role and claim management, so you can focus on what you want to build, ie classified posting application.
cloudscribe puts no limits or constraints on your development approach. You could also use cloudscribe SimpleContent for marketing/information pages of your site if you need that, but you can use cloudscribe Core without using SimpleContent if you don't need that.
I've been tasked with creating a documentation website for some services that we expose externally. Part of my task is to find out what the best base software would be to build this site. One of my specific objectives is to determine whether or not the Liferay Portal software or its plugins are suitable for building what is primarily functioning as an API documentation website. It seems like Liferay is meant for more content-driving applications, such as news, wikis, blogs, etc.
If Liferay is suitable for this task, are there any pointers on what the general layout should be for the site?
Liferay itself is proving to be rather complicated to learn, so I figured that it'd be better to figure out if I'm wasting my time or not before really diving into learning how to use it.
At the same time, are there any better, non-commercial alternatives?
Thanks!
I am creating web portal using Liferay and I implemented a simple document browsing page. I was using amazon java libraries to accomplish that and it was quite easy(just download all of the jars, include them in your portlet library folder and AWS(AmazonS3) is ready to use). On the other, the programmatic part of creating this portals with Liferay is quite a lot. I suggest you if you don't like programming to chose another software :)
I hope this was helpful! Its just an advice not a concrete answer.
Good luck with developing your website :)
I'm looking for a free, simple and efficient CMS for building website for a small company.
Prerequisites are:
The website is nothing more than a presentation - with informative content and gallery. The website should contain a nice-looking gallery with js/ajax flavour. Nothing more is planned for now, but it would be nice if CMS would feature some more generic modules/extensions in case I would like to use them in future.
Design templates should be easy to adopt and change.
Coding as little as possible.
I thought about Drupal, but is there any other CMS which would better fit to these requirements?
Please don't list available CMS-es here. Give it a reason!
Wordpress is nice too :p It has a big community behind...
I say Drupal.
Drupal is really good in content management. You can create different content types, and assign them fields (in Drupal 6, you will need the CCK contrib module). You can create a gallery with Views and it's output plugins. There are dozens of them, using different layout and JavaScript effects (mostly different jQuery plugins, but there are plugins for lightbox and thickbox also).
Drupal has a group of themes called "starter themes". These themes are half-ready, and it is very easy to create your own custom themes with them. All you need is to create a subtheme. (Basically making an info file and copy some other files. There are really a lot of howtos out there.) There are also starter themes for 960 (CSS framework), so you can make the site layout really fast. The most famous starter theme is called Zen. You might want to use that.
Except for the theme, I don't think that you have to write any code. Writing a theme for Drupal is not hard, since it uses PHP to render the themes.
Still in beta (0.5) phase but looking very promising: Orchard, a new ASP.NET MVC based CMS created by the people from Microsoft.
Orchard will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals. Orchard is delivered as part of the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery under the CodePlex Foundation. It is licensed under a New BSD license, which is approved by the OSI.
The intended output of the Orchard project is three-fold:
Individual .NET-based applications that appeal to end-users , scripters, and developers
A set of re-usable components that makes it easy to build such applications
A vibrant community to help define these applications and extensions
In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through module extensions and themes.
It depends on what kind of CMS you are after
pity you don't like programming otherwise i would suggest django, an awsome CMS framework
if you are after something simple like a few static pages and a news feed or something like that then wordpress might suit your needs well, except i have found i don't like how it handles gallery's
if you need anything more, like more advanced custom content types for products, i would recommend Joomla or Drupal, and have plug-ins that has good support for photo galleys
Joomla! will probably be a better choice. It is very easy to use and is highly extensible.
Have a look at:
CMS Made Simple
CMS Made Simple provides a fast and
easy way to create a professional web
site and manage its content, whether
it's for a small business or a
multinational corporation!
Features
General Features
SEO Friendly URLs
Integrated and online help
Modular and extensible
Easy user and group management
Group-based permission system
Full template support, for unlimited looks without changing a line of content
Easy wizard based install and upgrade procedures
Minimal server requirements
Admin panel with multiple language support
Content hierarchy with unlimited depth and size
Integrated file manager w/ upload capabilities
Integrated audit log
Friendly support in forums and irc
Small footprint
Design Features
Accessibility WAI, WCGA, Section 508
XHTML and CSS compliant
Auto-generated menu
Every page can have different theme
Design protected from content editors
Multiple content areas on one page
If you have a little C# experience then you can try Umbraco.
It is a very powerfull CMS written in C# for ASP.NET
It is one of the most powerfull both free and commercial CMS out there.
i recommend to check out the Feature Matrix so you can see if it fulfills your needs.
As an example http://asp.net uses Umbraco
have you tried DotNetNuke ?
A client wants us to develop a Picture Library system for them. The requirements are pretty typical - need to add pictures, tag them with metadata, store different sized versions and so on.
The client is keen on it being developed as a component which plugs into their existing SharePoint system. However, my feeling is that we would be better served building a standalone app - that way we don't have to shoehorn it into a SharePoint page and muck about integrating with SharePoint's APIs.
I am trying to look at this objectively and would welcome any arguments either way that people have.
Using an existing framework like Sharepoint imposes a lot of constraints on the design which makes the software architecture more uniform.
It does require some work on the part of the developer, because the developer does have to understand the API architecture and API's, etc.
However, developing a standalone application is the way that business's software architecture becomes a mix of 200 applications, using 20 different languages/architectures/platforms, half of which were developed by people no longer there - in short, a mess.
Sharepoint is documented, and will be supported probably long after you leave the company. Can you guarantee support for the application that you develop for as long as Microsoft will support Sharepoint?
You should do a cost/benefit analysis of integrating with SharePoint. You have listed some cons for integrating with SharePoint. Here are some pros.
Widely adopted platform.
Existing functionality to store/retreive/update images to data store.
Existing functionality to tag images.
Existing functionality to group several images together and treat as one virtual document (if using SharePoint 2010).
Keep in mind that you can integrate any custom ASP.NET page/application in Sharepoint so you can approach development like a standalone app. Your client wishes might include synchronization with Sharepoint's own picture library functionality and in that case you'll have to work with it's API.
It seems with SharePoint you are already done because it can more or less do what you describe already. What requirements do you have that cannot be met by OOB SharePoint?
I've used picture libraries for something similar before. While they have their quirks you do get a lot 'for free' like a UI, bulk uploading, metadata and 2 alternate sizes rendered.. My biggest gripe is they don't support the datagrid view so I cannot edit list metadata en masse like you can with other list types.
I've got a little history in CMS technology and I wonder if anyone could recommend a CMS-System (esp. WCM) for large content rich websites. Consider a hierarchical tree structure of sites with e.g. 4-5 levels, where you have about 10 to 15 trees of sites.
e.g.:
Organisation 1-n
1.1 Suborg 1-n
1.2 Special-Microsite 1-n
You should further be able to share content & navigation within sites (trees) an attach own site-specific navigation and content to shared navigation - wich only appears in the site scope but not globally.
When you could say about a system it rocks even with 500+ sites and complex permission landscape, please let me know.
Use EMC Documentum.. Its not a open source WCM application, but its robust and really good for large systems. I have worked on it for complex permissions and large web sites.
Alfresco is an open source ECM with Web Content Management . It was started in 2005 by the former founder of Documentum and engineering team of former Documentum developers, and has been built by engineers with many years of experience from Interwoven, Vignette, and other ECM players. It's a modern architecture, and is runtime-agnostic, so you can have .NET sites managed right next with Java Sites, PHP sites, etc.
Used by lots of large and medium sized enterprises all over the world (check customers list).
If you are already using Oracle for [anything]. Then I would recommend looking at Oracle UCM 11g. The 11g version was released recently and boasts some impressive stats, capabilities.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/overview/index.html