Joomla Chicago Meeting July, 2009: CMS CageMatch II

Open WCM Landscape and Leaders Comparison07.08.2009

2

Agenda

» Web Content Management

» Trends and Landscape

» Assessment Overview and Methodology

» Summary Results

» Product Assessments

» Alfresco

» Drupal

» Joomla!

» Magnolia

» Conclusions

Web Content Management

3

4

WCM Definitions

Web Content Management (WCM) refers to the creation and maintenance of

information and related assets intended to be consumed through a web browser. This can

refer to content intended for the public Internet or private Intranets.

Web Content Management System (WCMS) describes the software responsible for

controlling and delivering content as well as the administration of the user roles and

privileges involved in the process. WCM Systems are generally used to enable multiple

non-technical users to easily author, edit, translate, and organize web content from

creation to publish.

5

Why Web Content Management?

Properly implemented, a Web Content Management solution should:

» Reduce content update costs by enabling content authoring and deployment by business users

instead of technology specialists

» Improve quality of content through consistent, tech-facilitated content review processes (workflow)

» Improve consistency of content (structure and format) through the use of content templates and

tech-facilitated enforcement of the corporate style guide

» Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of addressing marketing objectives for SEO/SEM and site

analytics

» Ensure consistent application of business requirements for content currency and archival /

retirement through rules automation

» Provide enhanced responsiveness to business needs for new consumer features via vendor-

provided components

» Reduce time to deployment for new site sections / microsites via site & content templating

capabilities

» Free technology resources to focus on site capabilities, design and performance instead of content

authoring and maintenance

6

Traditional Website Deployment: Manual Process Inefficiencies

`

Business / Marketing Manager

Request

Deploy

Did you mean?

Clarification

Wait

Wait

How is this?

Review

Wait

Ready now?

Approval

HTML Developer

Content Author

Inte

rnal

Co

ord

inat

ion

Web Server

In a traditional Website deployment

model, process inefficiencies increase

cost, limit innovation, and constrain

business value.

Design

Manage

Business stakeholders are fully dependent

on the available capacity of IT to sustain

the velocity and value of their primary

digital marketing channel.

7

Web Content Management: Direct Engagement of Content Owners

`

Business / Marketing Manager

Author

HTML Developer

Content Author

`

`

Web Server

Review

Desig

n

Content Lifecycle Automation(w/Approvals)

Trends and Landscape

8

9

Current WCM Trends

Syndication

» Usage reporting has evolved into Web Analytics

» Understand the business impact of site changes

» For known users, integration with back-end systems, such as user repositories, for enhanced reporting

» Identify the content that best meets business goals such as lead generation and purchase conversion

» Content has consumers that will choose how they consume information – news media, vendors, customers and more

» Content also needs to be distributed, and possibly personalized, across channels such as email, XML, even print

» Once the content is syndicated, determine how the usage can be tracked and even monetized

» Rich media (especially video) is becoming a core part of employee training and customer support

» This places increased demand on not only content production teams but the infrastructure to stream and serve the content

» Indexing rich media introduces new challenges that simple meta tags can’t address

Analytics

» Contribution of content does not happen on just one side of the firewall, yet still requires management

» Feedback and forums provide an additional opportunity for tracking the Voice of the Customer

» Ratings are an additional piece of metadata that helps to identify high value content

Rich Media

User Generated

Top WCM vendors have moved beyond addressing tactical problems like the “Webmaster Bottleneck” and are deploying products for organizations placing strategic importance on the web channel

10

Four “Flavors” of WCM

» Interwoven» Day» Vignette» Oracle» Fatwire

» Drupal» Alfresco» Magnolia» Joomla» DotNetNuke

Enterprise Open Source

How Much?How

Supported?

» OpenText» Ektron» Sitecore» Percussion» SharePoint

» Content on Demand™

» Clickability» CrownPeak» NextEdit

MidrangeWCMaaS

(WCM as a Service)

How Effective? How Reliable?

Rep

rese

nta

tive

V

end

ors

Key

Qu

est

ion

11

Enterprise WCM

» Highly flexible, configurable WCM solutions delivering extensive capabilities OOTB

» Prebuilt components / extensions for commonly requested features (e.g., social networking, basic workflow / deployment)

» Designed for environments with high content velocity (frequent updates to content, range of participants in the authoring and review process

» Architected to support high traffic, highly fault-tolerant implementations

Key Characteristics

» Are we going to get the right level of attention from the vendor given the scale of our implementation?

» Who brings the implementation expertise to the table—the vendor or an SI?

» Do we have the business needs & organizational maturity to take advantage of what an Enterprise solution has to offer?

» What are we really licensing / do we need everything that the vendor is bundling?

» What’s it going to cost us to get on the release treadmill?

Questions to Ask

12

Open Source WCM

» “…and it’s free!” Low or no costs associated with licensing the WCM product

» Products built on open standards with robust user communities» Innovations in WCM approach and features at this level often

percolate upwards to Enterprise and Midrange WCM products» Varying degrees of fit and finish in the offering—some offer a

complete OOTB WCM package, others more of a WCM framework» Business IT attitudes have generally shifted towards acceptance of

open source tools for a range of enterprise applications

Key Characteristics

» How dependent is our organization on its software vendors for guidance and support? Are we self-starters or high maintenance?

» Is there an “enterprise support vendor” for the product? Does the vendor actually understand “enterprise”?

» How healthy / robust is the open source community behind the product? Is it growing, stable, or waning?

» How are core product releases timed / structured? How painful are upgrades?

» What are the attitudes towards open source in our IT organization?

Questions to Ask

Assessment Overview

13

14

Assessment Overview

» Purpose: Identify key WCM requirements and assess existing Open Source tools for their ability to meet identified requirements.

» Goals and Objectives:

» Develop a scalable workbook that provides an overview of Open Source WCM tools, with the ability to add additional requirements and/or vendors.

» Enable process to consult clients towards an Open Source WCM tool that will meet their specific needs and priorities with minimal work required.

» Take a snapshot of leaders in the Open Source WCM spectrum in order to have a basis to evaluate later releases and competing tools.

15

Summary Results

3.92

2.67

4.14

3.00

4.08

3.68

3.83

2.67

1.86

4.56

3.00

4.37

4.08

4.10

4.00

4.69

4.08

5.00

4.00

3.86

4.14

4.69

4.23

3.95

4.58

3.62

5.00

3.94

3.92

4.58

3.83

3.19

3.57

4.13

3.46

3.32

3.67

3.76

3.86

3.63

3.00

3.74

0.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00

Alfresco Dot Net Nuke Drupal Joomla Magnolia Radiant Word Press

1.0 Content Creation and Management 2.0 Content Consumption 3.0 Content Publishing

4.0 System Administration and Configuration 5.0 Technical 6.0 Support

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Assessment Strategy

» Identified important WCM aspects and features

» Created ranking guidelines

» Individual product installation and assessment

» Workbook completion and review

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Product Overview - Alfresco

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Background / Current State

Background

Alfresco was founded in 2005 by John

Newton, co-founder of Documentum® and

John Powell, former COO of Business

Objects®.

Milestones

» October 2005 – Alfresco Product Launch

» May 2006 - Alfresco Enterprise Edition Goes

100% Open Source

» March 2009 - launched Alfresco Enterprise

3.1.

Key Awards

» EContent 100 Awards (2007,2008)

» InfoWorld Bossie Award for Best of Open

Source in Applications (2007,2008)

Current State

Community

Alfresco Forge - http://forge.alfresco.com/

» Hosted Projects: 186

» Registered Users: 1,740

Alfresco Forum - http://forums.alfresco.com/en/

» Total posts 57713

» Total topics 16963

» Total members 9369

Enterprise Support Option

» Alfresco Enterprise Network

» SLA -Gold or Platinum

» Bug Tracking and Fixing

» Issue Escalation

» Upgrade Support

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Architecture

» Enterprise-scale, high integrity-repository

» Modular, light-weight architecture

» 5X faster than commercial

» Latest Standards: Sprint,

» Hibernate, Lucene, JSF168,

» JCR170, CMIS

» Portal integration

» Distributed architecture

» High Availability

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Results Summary – Base Scores

4.25

2.67

4.14

3.00

4.08

3.68

0.000.000.000.000.000.00

3.83

2.67

1.86

4.56

3.00

4.37

4.08

4.10

4.00

4.69

4.08

5.00

4.08

3.86

4.14

4.69

4.23

3.95

4.58

3.62

5.00

3.94

3.92

4.58

3.83

3.19

3.57

4.13

3.46

3.32

3.67

3.76

3.86

3.63

3.00

3.74

0.000.000.000.000.000.000.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00

Alfresco CMS MadeSimple

Dot Net Nuke Drupal Joomla Magnolia Radiant Word Press WorkbookComplete

Unweighted Comparisson



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Content Creation, Management & Publishing

Content Creation & Management

» Alfresco WCM supports creating,

uploading and managing various type of

contents.

» XSD based web forms can be

implemented to create structured XML

contents which can be further rendered to

various format such as html contents.

» Import & Export: CIFS, WebDAV, ftp and

Bulkloading function.

» Alfresco WCM doesn’t provide spell and

grammar check and content categorization

function out of box.

Content Publishing

» Alfresco WCM allows users to publish,

un-publish and rollback to previous

versions.

» Contents can be automatically published

to multiple servers based on launch dates.

» Email and online notification can be

added to workflow notifying users when

contents are published or expired.

However, Email and online notification are

not subscription based.

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Content Consumption, System Administration & Configuration

Content Consumption

» Alfresco WCM doesn’t support Web 2.0

functions such as blog,Wiki threaded

discussion, posting comments etc.

» Web 2.0 functions are supported in

Alfresco Share.

System Administration & Configuration

» Admin can easily set up new web

projects, add web forms, users, workflow

and deployment servers to web projects.

» Alfresco provides APIs to extend and

add custom functions . In most cases,

custom functions have to be manually

deployed to the alfresco.

» Alfresco doesn’t provides the ability to

configure navigational elements.

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Technical

» Overall Alfresco WCM is an open, scalable and extensible solution. It provides

clustering and failover support, Web DAV support, CIFS support, LDAP support, provides

both hot/cold backup and restore support.

» It is based on Java, built on Sprint, Hibernate, Lucene, supports JSF168, JCR170,

CMIS.

24

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

» Extensible.

» Scalable.

» Decent versioning, rollback and

publishing support.

» Workflow based on JBPM can be

easily customized.

» Active community support.

Weaknesses

» Out of box authoring UI is not user

friendly. Alfresco doesn’t support in

context editing.

» Alfresco WCM doesn’t provide folder

level and document level security.

Web project users are able to see all

contents within the same web project.

» Contents can not be easily shared

across Alfresco DM and Alfresco

WCM. Alfresco WCM isn’t able to

fully leverage Alfresco DM’s strength.

25

Suitability

Suitable for:

» Medium scale web site with

thousands pages.

» Requires integration with J2EE

applications.

» Requires integration with LDAP and

Database.

» Requires customized workflow and

deployment processes.

» Site structure is simple, consistent

and static.

Not suitable for:

» Content authors with limited html

knowledge.

» Site requires multi-level security.

» Requires dynamic contents support

with limited development resource.

26

Product Overview - Drupal

27


Background

» Started by Dries Buytaert in 2000

» Evolved from version 1.0 to the current

version, 6.9

»Acquia offers an enterprise edition

including support with additional modules

» Solid roadmap that reaches goals and

gets the community involved

» Current official core release is 6.10 with

Acquia Drupal 1.2.6

Current State

» Acquia hosts enterprise sites. Their

support options include all of the following

at the enterprise level:

» Support (24/7 helpdesk)

» Maintenance

» DBA work

» The Drupal community is extensive, far

reaching and large enough that it’s difficult

to tell exactly how far it extends

»The community is very organized in both

core releases and bigger third-party

extensions - there are some smaller add-

ons that are still ad-hoc

» Community expects dedicated

participation from contributors

28

Architecture

» Works with Apache 1.3 or Apache 2.x hosted on UNIX/Linux, OS X, or Windows.

» Drupal core works using IIS 5, 6, or 7 if PHP is configured correctly (in view of

Microsoft's support lifecycle it is suggested that IIS 6 or IIS 7 is used).

» Maintains a group of core “modules” - a group of third party extensions.

» Does not have native SSL support but is easily extendable to support SSL.

» Drupal is a mix between a social publishing system and a traditional WCMS.

29


30



» Built-in ‘theming’.

» “Blocks” create modular components.

» Modules allow easy third-party

integration and maintenance.

» Triggers can be defined to manage

content or send notifications.

» Great blog/wiki architecture built-in

and extendable.

Content Publishing

» Easily integrated language support.

» Many types of content export are

built-in with additional support via

community modules.

» Triggers can be used to

publish/unpublish content.

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Content Creation, Management and Publishing (Sample)

32


Content Consumption

» Strong as far as notifications and

triggers are concerned.

» No native ability to deploy contents to

multiple web servers.

» Unintuitive publishing workflow.

» Supports the ability for content to be

in multiple states (i.e. publishing,

unpublished, etc).


» Strong built-in support for flexible

navigational/menu/tab components.

» Provides an admin tool for

monitoring/enabling/disabling

modules.

» Huge number of community

supported third-party modules

available.

» Provides good OOTB logging and

notifications.

33

System Administration & Configuration (Sample)

34

Technical

» Provides an OOTB internal caching mechanism.

» Runs on PHP and supports most major backend systems including Apache, IIS,

MySQL, SQL, and Oracle.

» Clustering and failover support can be tricky and requires both a third-party module

and serious configuration (though no extra coding necessarily).

» Content is stored in a database and is easily backed up and restored.

35


Strengths

» 250k+ members in the community.

» Great for building quick social

networking and social media sites.

» Can handle high amounts of traffic.

» Easily customizable.

Weaknesses

» Would not work well for typical

eCommerce or CMS-based sites

without heavy customization.

» Deployment to multiple web servers

requires coding customizations.

36

Suitability

Suitable for:

» Wiki or blog based sites.

» Social Media.

» Small eCommerce businesses.

» Most sites with high traffic demands.

» Rapid development of microsites.

Not suitable for:

» High volume eCommerce platforms.

» Complex workflow requirements.

» Large amounts of clustering.

» Extensive failover support

requirements.

37

Product Overview - Joomla!

38


Background

» Joomla! was established in 2005 as a

fork from Mambo. Joomla is a

Romanization of an Arabic word meaning

“all together.”

» Joomla! adopts the GNU GPL v2

license.

» Joomla! was the runner-up for Packt

Publishing’s Best Overall Open Source

CMS and Best PHP Open Source CMS in

2008 and winner of Best PHP Open

Source CMS in 2007.

Current State

» Version 1.5.10 is the current stable

release.

» Joomla! is built and supported by a Core

Team and community Working Groups.

» To date, 59 user groups are registered

within the community. As of July 2008, the

Joomla! forums have 255,000 registered

members posting across 40 languages.

» Substantial help/tutorial documentation,

API wiki pages, and blogs/articles are

available within the Help Site,

Documentation Site, and Developer

Network areas of the Joomla! homepage.

39

Architecture

» Joomla! is built upon the PHP (4.3.10, 5.2+) scripting language and runs on Apache

Web Server (1.3, 2.x+) and Microsoft IIS (6, 7). To date, Joomla! only supports the

MySQL database (3.23 – 4.1.x+).

» Joomla! is extended by plugins that enhance data, modules that enhance presentation,

and a template engine.

» Joomla! include several powerful system features out of the box such as Search,

Syndication, Taxonomy/Categorization, Navigation management (menus/breadcrumbs),

and support for XML-RPC.

40

Screenshots

41


3.92

2.67

4.14

3.00

4.08

3.68

0.000.000.000.000.000.00

3.83

2.67

1.86

4.56

3.00

4.37

4.08

4.10

4.00

4.69

4.08

5.00

4.08

3.86

4.14

4.69

4.23

3.95

4.58

3.62

5.00

3.94

3.92

4.58

3.83

3.19

3.57

4.13

3.46

3.32

3.67

3.76

3.86

3.63

3.00

3.74

0.000.000.000.000.000.000.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00



Weighted Comparisson



42



» Joomla! has a nearly complete set of

content creation and management

features including WYSIWYG editing,

content preview, access control for

authorship, categorization, file

management, and versioning.

» Joomla! lost points for requiring an

extension to build forms and lacking

WebDAV support.

Content Publishing

» Content in Joomla! can be published

automatically, expired automatically,

remain unpublished, and deployed to

multiple web servers.

» Third party extensions are required for

workflow and notification of content

modification.

43


Content Consumption

» Joomla! provides PDF and print views of

content out-of-the-box and supports

internationalized content.

» Popular and well-supported extensions

support all common community/social

features such as wikis, blogs, topical

discussion threads, voting, user profiles,

chat, and social network integration.


» Joomla!’s administration interface is well

organized and provides administrators

with all expected configuration options for

managing users, media, extensions,

themes, SEO, navigation, upgrading, and

logging.

» Joomla! lost points for lacking automatic

update notification.

44

Technical

» Joomla! runs on both Apache and IIS along side of PHP. Joomla! is currently reliant on

MySQL. Joomla! features caching and cache control mechanisms out-of-the-box.

» Maintenance mode is available in the system.

» Files can be managed through FTP or the web-based File Management system, but not

through WebDAV.

» Authentication via LDAP, OpenID, and Gmail.

» Remote Procedure Call support to the API via HTTP and XML enable web service style

integration.

45


Strengths

» Joomla! offers sophisticated content management features with many key Enterprise ready features out of the box.

» The administration interface is elegant and impressive compared to other popular Open Source offerings.

» The community is active, energetic, and steadily growing. Community activity and User Groups reflect the momentum of Joomla! adoption.

» Dozens of published books on Joomla! usage and development available for purchase, some of which are regularly stocked at most retail bookstores.

Weaknesses

» Joomla! only supports MySQL.

» There is no stand-out primary provider of commercial support services for Joomla!

» Joomla! lacks corporate sponsorship, but is governed by the board of directors of a not-for-profit organization, Open Source Matters Inc. (http://www.opensourcematters.org).

http://www.opensourcematters.org/

46

Suitability

Suitable for:

» Public facing and intranet websites

naturally structured around articles.

» Social/Community sites and portals.

» Pages contributed to and managed

by dozens of content authors.

Not suitable for:

» Websites with very complex

customization needs.

» Websites requiring high volume

transaction handling.

47

Product Overview - Magnolia

48


Background

» Magnolia 4.0 was released in March of

2009, the current release is Magnolia 4.1.

» In October 2008, JBoss.org chose

Magnolia as the platform to support its

website infrastructure.

Current State

» Magnolia International Ltd. Provides the

following services:

» Support

» Consulting

» Training

» Migration.

» The Magnolia Wiki can be found here:

http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/

Home.

» The Wiki has regular contributions from

the vendor and open source community,

discussing topics ranging from

Administration and Development to

Integrations and Troubleshooting.

49

Architecture

» Magnolia is based on Java and the Java Content Repository (JCR) JSR-170 standard,

and provides abstract classes for users to extend to create custom modules.

» Magnolia has a number of add-on modules, including Enterprise level modules

supporting LDAP, Form building and Weblogic and Websphere.

» There are also modules available to the open source community, including support for

Polls, Forums, and Workflows, and third-party modules including support for frameworks

such as Spring MVC and Struts 1.1.

» Due to the hierarchical nature of the JCR, there limited ability for dynamic content

beyond what the developers can code into components and templates.

» The authoring dialogs are based on static structures and offer no dynamic ability

without customization.

50


3.92

2.67

4.14

3.00

4.08

3.68

0.000.000.000.000.000.00

3.83

2.67

1.86

4.56

3.00

4.37

4.08

4.10

4.00

4.69

4.08

5.00

4.00

3.86

4.14

4.69

4.23

3.95

4.58

3.62

5.00

3.94

3.92

4.58

3.83

3.19

3.57

4.13

3.46

3.32

2.83

3.76

3.86

3.63

3.00

3.74

0.000.000.000.000.000.000.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00



Weighted Comparisson



51



» Authoring dialogs

» Authoring environment

» User management

» Hierarchical structure

Content Publishing

» Content publishing

» Notifications

» WAR deployment

52


Content Consumption

» Delivery of content in alternate

formats.

» Modules provide Wiki and Forum

capabilities.

» No user to user socialization

capabilities.

» Language support.


» Java API for JSP coding and abstract

classes for developing modules.

» Modules for extending capabilities

and functionality:

http://wiki.magnolia-cms.com/display/WIKI/List+of+Magnolia+Modules

.

» Administration through web browser.

» Configuration requires restart.



53

Technical

» Internal caching of what is returned per request, cache cleared on activation, or

configurable as a whole or per path.

» Since it is a Deployable WAR file, only need a webserver supporting J2EE.

» Backup and Restore through packages.

» No WebDAV or FTP support.

» No recorded metrics for concurrent users, performance in authoring.

54


Strengths

» Hierarchy allows for easy understanding

and control of the website structure.

» Java based, JSR-170, platform

independent.

» User Configuration is easy to

understand, the Access Control Lists and

Role configuration allows for control over

access to tools and hierarchy, as well as

page level content.

Weaknesses

» Code push to publish or other author

instances requires packaging or copying of

files from the webapp.

» Doesn’t support dynamic content well,

depends on coding of template or

component.

» Limited out of the box page components.

55

Suitability

Suitable for:

» Deployments of multiple authors and

users, with distinct and separate

responsibilities.

» Sites with authors of limited technical

knowledge and/or ability.

» Sites needing to integrate with J2EE

applications.

Not suitable for:

» Sites requiring low technical

maintenance.

» New template development without

coding.

» Quick and easy deployment and

configuration.

Conclusions

56

57

Interpretations and Conclusions

» Although Drupal ranked highest among the tools chosen, the margin was slim and

the assessment results shown here are not weighted by importance factors which

vary between organizations.

» The incumbent leaders in Open Source WCM systems offer compelling features and

Enterprise-ready polish.

» Support is often a requirement and expectation for large organizations and some

Open Source WCM tools do indeed provide a respectable level of support along

with an Enterprise licensing tier.

» The major challenges for the further adoption of Open Source WCM software in the

Enterprise market involve education around licensing, support, maturity, and

stability. When considering Open Source solutions, these topics often engender

uncertainty, at best, and misinformation at worst.

Questions?

58

Thank You!

Technology

Joomla Chicago Meeting July, 2009: CMS CageMatch II