Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms Throughout the course of this book, you’ve learned how to build websites by hand, creating HTML pages one by one.. These types of appl
Trang 1This page intentionally left blank
Trang 2Content Management
Systems and
Publishing Platforms
Throughout the course of this book, you’ve learned how to build websites
by hand, creating HTML pages one by one In this lesson, you learn how
to use applications to manage aspects of your website These types of
applications are generally called content management systems, and I
explain how to use them to keep track of your content so that it’s easier
to publish and maintain
In this lesson, you learn the following:
n How content management systems came into being
n How to decide whether to use a content management system for
your website
n What the common types of content management systems are
n How to work with hosted web applications in general
n How to use four popular content management applications:
WordPress, Drupal, TypePad, and MediaWiki
Trang 3The Rise of Content Management
Content management systems were invented to deal with the complexity and tedium of
managing large collections of HTML documents by hand A content management system
is an application that manages website content in a form that’s convenient for editing and
maintenance and publishes the content as HTML Some content management systems
generate HTML programmatically on-the-fly, whereas others generate static files and
publish them Most content management systems are web applications themselves Users
enter and manage content via HTML forms, and the content management system takes
care of storing the content in a database of some kind Generally, content management
systems provide some kind of facility for creating templates and then merge the content
entered by users with the templates to produce a finished website When templates are
updated, all the pages that use those templates automatically have the changes applied to
them
Content management systems were initially deployed at the largest sites, such as online
news sites, online catalogs, and technical sites that published lots of data These systems
were generally custom built and rather complicated Content management eventually
became an industry unto itself, with many companies producing large, expensive systems
aimed at publishers, large corporate websites, and other customers who had lots of web
content and a few hundred thousand dollars to spend to deploy a system to manage that
content
At the same time, content management systems aimed at individuals also became
increasingly popular, except that they weren’t called content management tools Instead,
they were called weblogging (blogging) tools, wikis, photo galleries, and so on
These days, most websites are built using content management systems of some kind,
and some of the largest and busiest websites utilize content management tools that were
originally aimed at individuals running small sites For example, one of the busiest sites
on the Web, Wikipedia.org, is an encyclopedia written and edited by volunteers that was
built using a content management system called a wiki Wikis started out as a way to
make it easy for individuals to quickly publish content on the Web without any
knowl-edge of HTML Now you can download and use MediaWiki, the tool behind Wikipedia,
free of charge You’ll learn more about it later in this lesson
Content Management in the Cloud
These days, many web publishers do not even host their own content management
sys-tems They subscribe to applications provided by companies that specialize in managing
these sorts of applications So, for example, instead of installing the WordPress blogging
tool, you can just sign up for an account at WordPress.com and set up your blog,
658 LESSON 22: Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms
Trang 4avoiding the task of downloading WordPress, installing it on a server, and making sure
that it all works The advantage is ease in getting started and reduced maintenance over
time, and the disadvantage is lack of control When you set up your own copy of
WordPress, you can install your own themes and plug-ins, or even modify WordPress
itself if you need to Using the version of WordPress provided by WordPress.com
elimi-nates some of that flexibility
The other major trend in web development is sites making it easy to use content from
websites on other websites In Lesson 12, “Integrating Multimedia: Sound, Video, and
More,” you learned how to upload videos to YouTube and then embed those videos in
your own pages Doing so enables you to avoid the hassle of encoding video yourself,
renting space to put the videos online, and providing a player that works in every popular
browser Allowing this kind of flexibility is becoming increasingly common So, rather
than going out and finding one tool that gives you all the features you require, you can
mix and match tools as needed to offer your users exactly the kind of experience you
want
By combining services that provide content management, user community features, and
multimedia hosting, you can offer your users capabilities that, not too long ago, would
have been completely out of reach for the individual web publisher Right now, in an
afternoon, you can create a new blog on WordPress.com, populate it with videos hosted
on Vimeo, and allow your users to discuss the videos using a third-party comments tool
like Disqus (http://disqus.com/)
Is a Content Management System Right
for You?
It might seem odd to talk about using an application to manage your content now after
you’ve worked through 21 lessons explaining how to build web pages from scratch
However, those skills will serve you well whether you use a content management system
or not Content management systems can take a lot of drudgery out of web publishing
without limiting the amount of creativity you can apply in designing your web pages
Some work is involved in learning, setting up, and customizing a content management
system When you’re creating a website, it’s probably easier to start with just a few static
files and leave aside the content management system As your site gets bigger, though, at
some point the work involved with dealing with static files offsets the initial investment
required to start working with a content management system You have to figure out
whether that initial time investment will be worth the effort
22
Trang 5Another common trade-off with content management systems is that they vary in
flexi-bility Some, such as photo galleries, are built to handle specific kinds of content You
wouldn’t use photo gallery software to manage an online news site, for example Others
are more flexible For example, Drupal is designed as a generic content management
sys-tem for any type of content Generally speaking, the more flexible a content management
system is, the more work it is to set up So, if you know you’re publishing a photo
gallery, setting up a photo gallery package probably makes more sense than setting up a
general-purpose content management system and customizing it to present photos
In Lesson 20, “Putting Your Site Online,” I talked about the various options for web
hosting A similar set of options is available when it comes to content management
sys-tems You can write your own This provides the most flexibility, but it can be a huge
amount of work You can install and manage an application that someone else wrote and
customize it for your own needs Generally, to go this route, you need your own server or
at least an account with a web hosting provider The final option is to sign up for a
hosted application For many kinds of web applications, free versions are even available
They make sure that the servers stay up and that the application is running properly, and
you just focus on entering your content and making whatever customizations are
avail-able Hosted applications are generally the least flexible, but they’re also the easiest to
get started with
Types of Content Management Systems
Content management systems can be sorted into rough categories As you’ve probably
figured out, there’s more to it than just deciding to use a content management system
You have to figure out what type of content you have and which content management
system makes the most sense for you In some cases, multiple content management
sys-tems may be the answer You might prefer to publish your writing using a blogging tool
and to publish your photos using a photo gallery application Here’s a discussion of some
common types of content management systems
Blogging Tools
It seems you can’t escape the term weblog (or more commonly, blog) these days A web
log is just a website where new items are published in reverse chronological order The
items can be articles, links, recipes, photos, or anything else Generally the most recent
items are displayed on the front page, the site maintains an archive of earlier material,
and in many cases the site allows users to publish comments of their own You can find
blogs on just about any topic of interest, and increasingly blogs are integrated into other
types of websites For example, many magazines and newspapers publish blogs as part of
660 LESSON 22: Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms
Trang 6their sites Companies are using blogs to communicate directly with their customers
Political campaigns are using them to get their message out In large part, the reason
blogs have taken off is that the format is easy to work with You can publish short items
as frequently as you like, and users know that when they visit the site they’ll always see
the latest and greatest information right up front In this lesson, I discuss a blogging
package you can install yourself called WordPress as well as a hosted blog tool called
TypePad Google also offers a hosted solution that’s free to use called Blogger, which
you can find at http://www.blogger.com, and many people are starting to use Tumblr
(http://tumblr.com), a tool that makes it easy to create a blog around snippets found on
other sites You may want to check them out, too
Community Publishing Applications
Community publishing applications are similar to blogging tools in that they are usually
built around publishing items by date right up front They differ from blogging tools in
that they are more centered around providing features for all the site’s users, not just the
site’s author or authors Generally, these applications enable users to register as members
of the site, submit stories, and engage in discussions among themselves Sites that
incor-porate this kind of functionality include http://reddit.com/ and http://digg.com/
Drupal (http://drupal.org) is the most popular application in this category right now It’s a
community publishing system written in PHP The application is written in a modular
fashion so that you can include only the features you want
Wikis
Wiki-style systems take the most radical and counterintuitive approach to content
man-agement Most wikis not only allow anyone to view articles but also to edit them Some
wikis require users to register before they can view or edit articles, but the wiki
philoso-phy is that every user is an editor When most people hear about this concept, they
imag-ine that the result will be anarchy, but as long as there is a critical mass of users who
want the wiki to be useful, this type of system is resistant to attempted defacement
Wikis generally keep a history of changes made to every article, so it’s easy to go back to
an older version of a page if someone deletes things he shouldn’t or otherwise submits
unwanted changes
The most famous wiki is Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org), an online encyclopedia
writ-ten and edited by volunteers Not only can anyone view the articles in the encyclopedia,
but they can also edit them If you know something about Fargo, North Dakota, that’s not
already in Wikipedia, you can look it up there and add your own information Attempted
vandalism is taken care of by volunteers who keep an eye out for it, and volunteers
han-dle disputes over controversial content, too
22
Trang 7The name wiki comes from the name of the original wiki software, which was called
WikiWikiWeb, taken from an airport bus route in Honolulu, Hawaii To read more about
the nature of wikis and their history, why not read about them in Wikipedia? The URL is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Aside that everyone can edit the pages in a wiki, the other distinguishing feature of
wikis is that they generally provide their own markup language rather than HTML
Generally wiki markup is less flexible than HTML but also a bit easier to get the
hang of Unfortunately, wiki markup usually differs between wiki software packages,
so learning MediaWiki’s markup language won’t help you out a whole lot if you start
using TWiki, for example
Wikis aren’t right for every project If you want to publish your poetry online, putting it
up on a page where anyone can edit it probably isn’t a good idea On the other hand, if
you need a site where a group can collaboratively write documentation for a project, a
wiki can be a great choice Here’s a list of other popular wiki applications and hosts:
n WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)—The original wiki.
n MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org/)—The software behind Wikipedia I
dis-cuss it more later in this lesson
You can find a comparison of various wiki software packages at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software
There’s also a list of hosted wikis that you can use at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms
Image Galleries
As digital cameras have grown more popular, so too has sharing photos online There are
many photo-sharing sites online that you can use to host your photos Some popular
choices include Flickr (http://flickr.com/), Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/), and
SmugMug (http://smugmug.com)
If you just want to upload pictures and share them with your friends and family
mem-bers, these sites provide an easy way to do that In some cases, however, you might want
to host your own image galleries A number of popular image gallery applications are
available that vary in terms of complexity and the extent to which they can be
cus-tomized The good ones take care of creating thumbnails of your images for you so that
you can just upload your photos without dealing with image-editing programs
662 LESSON 22: Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms
Trang 8General-Purpose Content Management Systems
There are far too many general-purpose content management systems to list here Some
content management systems are just toolkits that enable you to build something on your
own Others are highly structured with tons of features that you control via configuration,
rather than by writing code on your own Here are some features that these
general-pur-pose content management systems tend to have in common:
n Templating system—All content management systems provide some way for you
to specify how your content will be laid out on the page and how the pages
con-taining the content will look Most templates take the form of HTML files with
special markers that indicate where each piece of content goes In many cases, the
templates are just regular PHP, JSP, or ASP pages In other cases, the content
man-agement system will provide its own template language
n Data repository—Content management systems produce web pages, but they
usu-ally store the data in some structured format, whether it’s in a relational database or
in XML files When users enter data, it is stored so that the system can merge the
data with the templates to generate HTML when the documents are
published
n Workflow system—Controlling who gets to edit which content as well as
manag-ing processes for movmanag-ing content from draft to published status are big parts of
many content management systems Some provide rigid systems that you have to
work within; others let you modify the workflow to suit your own organization
Generally, complex workflow features are part of larger content management
sys-tems They’re not useful for individuals or small groups
n System for writing and editing content—All content management systems
pro-vide some way for you to get your content into the system Some enable you to
enter it using HTML forms; others provide integration with external tools such as
Microsoft Word
n System for publishing content—After content is in the repository and has been
approved for publishing, a content management system has to merge that content
with a template and publish it on a web page Some content management systems
produce actual HTML files; others generate the HTML on-the-fly for every
request Which approach is used usually depends on how much dynamic content
appears on the page Most content management systems that don’t publish static
files provide some mechanism for caching so that data that hasn’t changed can be
read from the cache rather than being generated dynamically
22
Trang 9Working with Packaged Software
So far, this book has been about building things from scratch This lesson, on the other
hand, is about applying tools to make building things a bit easier However, as I’ve
men-tioned, using existing tools can be a job unto itself Before you can start using
MediaWiki to manage your content, you have to download it and get it installed on a
server and configured properly The same is true with any software package Even if you
go with a hosted solution, you still have to set things up so that the software enables you
to accomplish your goals
You may also be wondering at this point why you bothered to learn HTML, CSS,
JavaScript, and everything else in between if you’re going to let an application do your
work for you This is one of the most common misconceptions about this kind of
soft-ware Content management systems make some things more convenient, but you’ll still
apply all the skills you learned over the course of the book to make your pages look the
way you like
Before discussing specific applications, I’m going to discuss some topics that pertain to
nearly all applications of this kind: relational databases and deployment issues
Relational Databases
In Lesson 21, “Taking Advantage of the Server,” and in this lesson, I’ve brought up the
subject of relational databases more than once, but I haven’t explained what they are or
how they work Relational databases are by far the most popular data repository for web
applications There are a number of reasons for that:
n They can scale from the smallest to the largest of applications—You can start a
website on a web hosting account on a server that’s shared with 50 other people
and eventually wind up running 50 servers of your own and use a relational
data-base to store your data the entire way
n They are flexible when it comes to the types of data they can store—All
rela-tional databases store their data in tabular format Each record is a row in a table,
and the columns describe the properties of each record In other words, if you have
a table to store information about people, every person will have the same
proper-ties The actual structure of your tables can be customized to suit just about any
task You can create a table of links that has names, URLs, and descriptions for
each link, or a table of invoices that lists the customer, amount, shipping address,
and item ordered for each invoice The columns in the table can be configured to
hold numbers, dates, short strings, large bodies of text, or even binary files
664 LESSON 22: Content Management Systems and Publishing Platforms
Trang 10n You can create relationships between tables—That’s where the “relational” in
relational database comes from You can relate articles to authors, invoices to
cus-tomers, or even people to other people within the same table The relational model
is very, very powerful
n Relational databases use a standard query language called SQL (Structured
Query Language)—Although some differences exist between database vendors, if
you know SQL you can work with just about any relational database
n Relational databases are popular—The basic technology behind relational
data-bases hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years, and they are the foundation of
many business applications What has changed is that now several relational
data-bases are freely available, providing powerful features once only associated with
the most expensive software targeted at large corporations Relational databases are
so popular and common that using them for data storage for an application is often
an easy decision
Relational databases are usually deployed as a service that is accessible over the network,
much like an HTTP server The difference is that instead of using HTTP to
communi-cate, the database will use its own proprietary protocol To communicate with a database,
you generally need some kind of client or library provided by the database vendor PHP
has clients for most popular relational databases built in, so you can just use the
func-tions associated with your database and not install anything extra
Most hosting providers that allow you to use PHP, CGI scripts, or some other scripting
environment also provide access to relational databases You may have to fill out a
spe-cial form to have a database set up for you After it’s set up, your hosting provider will
give you the hostname of your database server and a username or password You can use
that information to access the database, or in the case of packaged software, you can use
it to configure the software so that it can access the database
After a relational database is installed, all the administrative tasks—from creating
spe-cific databases to creating and managing users—are accomplished using SQL So to
con-figure a database for a particular application, you generally create a new user and
database for it to use and then run an installation script that creates all the tables that the
application needs and inserts the initial data into the database You hosting provider will
often take care of creating the user and database, and you will run the installation script
that builds the initial database
22