Boris MannRaincity Studios

http://www.raincitystudios.comhttp://bmannconsulting.com

The 3 Stages of CMS

If I had a tag cloud…

Bryght

Raincity

Vancouver

tech evangelist

Drupal

open source

hand waver

beer

XMPP

social software

Northern Voice

Uh oh.

Is he just going to talk about Drupal?

But I’m not going to be a

Dick

Uh oh.

Is this one of those talks?

(thinks the guy in the back)

(be thankful: at the last minute, I almost switched everything to Comic Sans)

Oh, and if I don’t mention your favourite dynamic system, it’s

because it sux.

(actually, it’s all about interoperable systems, but that’s probably someone

else’s presentation)

INTERACTIVE!

(I’d like to keep asking you questions)

The 3 stages of dynamic systems. Ugh. Sounds like a thesis.

Do I need to convince you that “dynamic systems” are where

we’re at?

CMS, web apps, RSS feeds, etc.

(there’s that pesky thing about dynamic being great for SEO, too)

So, here’s the think:every single “page” is becoming a

dynamic system all by itself.

(Insert hand waving)

Furthermore, implementing basic features (such as comments or forums, or a flexible array of RSS feeds, or a decent site search engine) is needlessly complex and difficult in Dreamweaver. … Because online journalism without such basic features is crippled.

Dreamweaver Sux

This is the part where you tell me about “static” pages.

Now we’re going to build an OpenID server in just one “static”

page.

<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://home.bryght.com/user/3"/>

Bonus slide:Remember when your business model was updating individual

pages?

(We’re actually going to come back to the business model thing)

ANYWAYS

The 3 stages

Designing for dynamic systems

Choosing open source

Plugin mania

Frameworks

frack

There is SO much to talk about

(Maybe we should just listen to Oberkirch’s presentation again)

The 3 Stages

•Simple content management•dude, the client wants to edit their

own content

•Beyond the blog•calendars. and forums. better add

a wiki, too

•Building web applications• I’m pretty sure we need a custom

function for that

Of course that’s too simplistic.There are stages within those.Upgrades. Redesigns. Budget. Level of technical expertise.

How many people use a version control system?

Web Applications

•At some point you wake up and realize you’re adding custom functionality to something that started as “just a website”

•Congratulations! You’ve got your very own web application!

•user profiles, personalization

4th Stage

“Power of remixable data”

(insert Brian Oberkirch’s presentation here)

Me == Oberkirch fanboy

RSS. APIs. Microformats. OpenID. OAuth. Attribute Exchange.

(RDF and the Semantic Web…maybe)

Got any other names or labels for types of sites? Does your company

slot a customer into a type?

Designing for Dynamic Systems

•The new site map•Templates•UGC sux

(Note: presenter is not an actual designer)

The new site map

•A sitemap used to be literally every page in a site

•Now, it’s more like an outline of the templates that have to be built•Type of page•Landing page

•Maybe: APIs, different types of feeds…and admin screens, too

Templates

•Need to be designing across the entire site

•Use a grid•Use realistic example text

•e.g. long names; like Really Long Name That No One Will Enter

•Oh yeah, and you should probably plan for users

UGC Sux

•Your design is finished, then....•comments!• forum posts!• italics, bold, break tags, and more

UGC Sux Less?

•Include styles for UGC•Strip out / close tags•Live preview•Image resizing (crop / scale /

placement)

Back to Templates.

Template LANGUAGE?!

•This is the ultimate Designer meet Developer

•CSS is programming!•And then the developer was all,

like, just learn this little code snippet…

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible"…

That was a cheap shot. But, MSFT made fun of my hair once

Push vs. pull is kind of interesting.

TEMPLATES.

Whatever. They’re all painful.

Suggestions?

(I’m pretty sure any phrases involving XML and/or XSLT transforms is going to be painful)

Choosing Open Source

•Open source doesn’t mean free•Become an expert•Small local firms rolling their

own

What’s your business model?•It’s probably not selling bits•What are you actually selling?•It probably is process,

expertise, design•Maybe a side of services (but,

like Josh said, hosting sux)

.NET open source?

(Sharepoint, not so much, unfortunately. Plugins, maybe?)

Community Return on Investment (ROI)

Why the frack is this guy talking about open source?

Three choices?

•Resell someone else’s code•Use open source•Roll your own

(I know we’re in Vangroovy.But rolling your own is not cool.)

A story about local web design dev firms.

Everybody else’s code sux! I’m building my own! I’m going to get

$paid$ to code more stuff, too.

Wait…what’s your business model again?

Of course…

…open source SUX. It’s badly documented, it’s unsupported,

and it doesn’t work like it says on the box.

(but at least you’ve got someone else to blame)

We’re all in this together. Going open probably means more of the open web gets built more

quickly.

Anyone got some business models to share?

(it’s all about the icons and Facebook apps)

Plugins and Modules

•Virtually all systems have a way to extend the base

•Sweet! New functionality for free!

•Except…• Installation, training, configuration•Updates and security•“Just one more tweak” to the design

We’re going to take an interlude to the base of the system you’re

using.

Don’t hack the core.

Well, if you’re going to hack, make some patches.

Back to plugins…

(They’re like hacking without the hack)

Build up a set of features / list of plugins that you know are good. Covet them. Don’t add to them.

Have a backup plan.

(Like: this goes on the we might add this in phase 1 list. Might.)

Of course, you can build your own.

(Oooh! Maybe this is your business plan?)

Designers: make some mock ups. If they’re pretty, developers will

want to build it.

(can you crowdsource your next website?)

Clients/Users: maybe you have the same pain as other people. Can

you fund a common solution? Can you make an existing one suck

less?

Developers: please don’t re-invent the wheel.

(Except, sometimes, we need a crazy one to do things differently)

Got any cool plugins to share?

Frameworks

•100s (thousands?) of frameworks

•Rails (Ruby)•Django (Python)•Symfony (PHP)(Note: building from scratch is not an option)

(No, really, it isn’t)

Where is it going to be deployed?PHP tends to run everywhere.

(Tip: sneak PHP into enterprise by deploying it on a Java stack)

Real programmers tend to love just about anything better than

PHP. Except for Java.

Are there people locally that use your framework?

(There are tons of TYPO3 users in Germany)

Don’t forget about libraries!

Yeah, I know the frameworks bit in here was short. Did you think I was going to start a flame war?

Got something else to share?

Let’s wrap it up

The web is only going to get more dynamic.

All these things need to talk to each other.

Think about your business model.

And I didn’t even talk about internationalization.

(the English web is a pretty small place)