Content Management Systems I Would Or Wouldn’t Fuck

December 5, 2006 3:05 AM

Content Management Systems I Would Or Wouldn’t Fuck[via]
posted by feelinglistless (58 comments total)

Something went wrong with the CSS on his site and obscured the top 10 formatting of the post
posted by srboisvert at 3:17 AM on December 5, 2006

He forgot Typo3. A bit like Drupal, once you figure it out it's great. It helps to speak German or Danish. But it will be hard to get any nookie from this nun in a habit. It's on a mission from God. With the right extensions though, she'll be your bitch.
posted by chillmost at 3:28 AM on December 5, 2006

And no Joomla? Or am I just a whore for liking it...

awful fpp. Is it really best of the web?
posted by twistedonion at 3:42 AM on December 5, 2006

Are Blogger and Vox even CMS's? The article and this post blow.
posted by gsteff at 3:53 AM on December 5, 2006

That's not very sporting of you, gsteff.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:01 AM on December 5, 2006

Funny blog entry but sucky fpp. Must try harder C-
posted by anonaccount at 4:01 AM on December 5, 2006

No, we’re not homosexual, but we are willing to learn.

Hrm. That 5 second article sure blows like an old pro.
posted by loquacious at 4:36 AM on December 5, 2006

Content Management Systems That Would Or Wouldn’t Fuck Me would be more interesting.
posted by slimepuppy at 4:43 AM on December 5, 2006

It's a sad day when "CMS" becomes shorthand for "blog software".
posted by Remy at 4:44 AM on December 5, 2006

"The CMS most likely to be into Harry Potter bloodplay."
posted by Bravocharlie at 4:58 AM on December 5, 2006

I got my content deep into that management system, if you know what I mean.

I'm so ashamed.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:09 AM on December 5, 2006

there's not a single cms listed in that blog article about blogging systems (even if it had included joomla or typo3). bizarre.
posted by 3.2.3 at 6:03 AM on December 5, 2006

meh
posted by jimfl at 6:31 AM on December 5, 2006

Drupal is overkill for a blog, so I'd say it qualifies. The others though ...
posted by moonbiter at 7:01 AM on December 5, 2006

i woudn't (haven't) kicked textpattern out of bed for eating crackers ..... ain't that right crackers.
posted by specialk420 at 7:17 AM on December 5, 2006

3.2.3... I'm curious, you don't consider Typo3 or Joomla to be CMS? Joomla is certainly quite lightweight, but Typo3 is pretty damn powerful. Certainly in my mind Joomla is a CMS (though it's pretty useless until you write a few components for your purposes. Until then it's really a site builder)
posted by twistedonion at 7:20 AM on December 5, 2006

Typo3 isn't a CMS, it's a way to inflict pain on the user
posted by slater at 7:29 AM on December 5, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, what about real CMSs, like Interwoven?

Blogging software != content management systems.

But I might try to feel up Vox, yeah.
posted by GuyZero at 7:57 AM on December 5, 2006

Typo3 does have a steep learning curve, but once you get it, it is a very powerful CMS. It can be used as blogging software but that would be like using a Formula 1 racer to go around the corner and pick up a gallon of milk. It gets the job done and it looks cool, but it is capable of much more.

Okay, enough CMS evangelizing.
posted by chillmost at 8:06 AM on December 5, 2006

CMS is a debased term in the software world. Everyone and their mother claims to be a CMS, so it's not surprising to see that people are confusing blogging software with content management systems. Heck, some people who are asking for content management software and paying money for it don't seem to know what they are either.
posted by rks404 at 8:14 AM on December 5, 2006

To stay in the metaphor: I wouldn't fuck any of those that are only "rented out" by their owners (Vox, Blogger) and that are just in it for the money...
Seriously, I'll grant that those pre-fab solutions might appeal to someone with no computer skills whatsoever, but if you're the least bit interested in creating something that isn't just personalized by choosing theme A, B or C you should definitely pick something that you yourself can install and tweak. Especially since I wouldn't like having to trust someone else with my blog data following their rules about what content is appropriate or what they are allowed to do with it; consider the TOS of Vox:

You agree that Six Apart, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, and/or account, and remove and discard any Content within the Service (including, but not limited to your Blog Site if you are an Account Holder), for any reason, including and without limitation, the lack of use, or if Six Apart believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOS. Any contracts, verbal or written or assumed, in conjunction with your deleted Blog Site (as applicable) and all its parts, at Six Apart's discretion, will be terminated as well. Six Apart may also in its sole discretion and at any time, discontinue providing the Service, or any part thereof, with or without notice.[...]You acknowledge that Six Apart does not pre-screen Content, but that Six Apart and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse, move or delete any Content that is available via the Service.

If you pick any of the open source solutions and run it for instance on a cheap vserver you're only bound by the terms of your ISP, the only ads you'll see are those you yourself added and that will benefit only you, and you'll probably learn a thing or two about computers / FTP / PHP, too. And the basic install of, say, WordPress is really, really easy yet much more fun than merely signing up to one of those mass-produced EZblogs.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 8:15 AM on December 5, 2006

No, liking Joomla does not make one a whore :) Yes, this is a fairly lame fpp, although if it inspired a great line about nookie from this nun in a habit and one about a post that blows like an old pro then it's redeemed.

Hmm, might check out Typo. Don't know quite what to think of PHP Poetry or the whole Mission from God thing, but might be fun to tinker around.

I can't get the whole excitement about Vox - doesn't look like anything Tribe hasn't already done. I will give Six Apart some credit for having a very cool design, though.
posted by rmm at 8:25 AM on December 5, 2006

That PHP Poetry thing is awful.

// Initialize settings
ignore_friends_calling(1);
tapeAllEpisodesOfFriends(1);
enablePlaylistWithChristianMusic(1);

That's enough to put me off Typo3 forever.
posted by twistedonion at 8:53 AM on December 5, 2006

All you people who keep saying "there are no real CMSs there": What constitutes a CMS?

Is a CMS something more than a Content Management System? Because that seems to be what you're implying. What are the additional requirements? And are they met by recognized commercial CMSs like Storyserver?

So far, this thread is basically "your favorite CMS sucks." Whine, whine, whine...
posted by lodurr at 9:18 AM on December 5, 2006

I've tried to get Typo3 working about four times. Two of those were with Fantastico installs, which (in principle) should just plain work. It was like pulling teeth to get the system to do anything. I had to make wholesale permission changes to get anything at all to even load on my first try. On my second, I got a page to load, but then couldn't find any documentation that told me what the hell to do with it.

I've been using Drupal so long that I forget how hard it is to get going with it and how deeply weird it seems to most people.

At a broader level, though, and after several years of trying to get people who design corporate website to consider CMSs, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing out there that is substantially better than Dreamweaver templates, once you consider the factors that end up being really important: Code transfer, maintainability and maintenance cost. CMSs have lots of hidden maintainability and maintenance cost issues. HTML is just HTML. Anybody with Dreamweaver (or probably GoLive) can import and maintain a site built on Dreamweaver templates.

Mind, for my own purposes, I stick with CMS systems all the way. The things that designers and clients regard as deal-killing weaknesses, I consider insignificant, and maintenance is not an issue for me. But I am not my clients.
posted by lodurr at 9:25 AM on December 5, 2006

I work with Typo. It's a steep learning curve, but once you figure it out, you are the true master of your domain.
I have installed it for to small, medium, and huge companies, and they're all happy with it.
To anybody who hasn't been able to get it to work, maybe you should stick with Frontpage?
posted by signal at 9:40 AM on December 5, 2006

It's a steep learning curve...
To anybody who hasn't been able to get it to work, maybe you should stick with Frontpage?

Ah, I love the bouquet of tech-macho bullshit....
posted by lodurr at 9:56 AM on December 5, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Not knocking the "tech-macho" bit (thanks!), but as for the bullshit: There's a ton of tutorials online, which explain exactly how to set up your first site, put pages up, restrict access, set up picture galleries, etc.They take a few days to work through, but after that you have a feature rich, stable, highly customizable CMS at your fingertips.
I, not being a programmer or a having any previous experience with CMSs, was able to convince Chile's largest IT company to use it for their web site instead of the crappy inhouse CMS they where using, and beat out like 10 other companies with non-opensource offerings. And made a bunch of money by selling them something that they knew was free. And they write software for a living.
Whenever people mention Typo3, they always say "I tried and tried for like 30 minutes!!! OMG and I couldn't get it to work".
Which is where the stick-to-frontpage thing pops in.
Thanks for the "tech-macho", thing though.
posted by signal at 10:36 AM on December 5, 2006

This is still a better post than the Cheap Trick one.
posted by interrobang at 10:44 AM on December 5, 2006

I messed with some of the mentioned systems once for a client. I found that most of them shared a common problem:

WordPress was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Wordpress site.

Mambo was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Mambo site.

Typo3 was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Typo3 site.

and so on... In other words, all good systems and it was easy to go with the framework's flow, but got sharply more difficult the more one tried to customise it.

I haven't yet found a simple yet powerful framework that's easy enough for the average client to maintain content, yet can be customised (by a pro) to just about any layout, configuration or content organisation, so that someone doesn't quickly know that the site's built on XXX.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:15 AM on December 5, 2006

Everyone, signal wins. Stop discussion now.

Go back to your Frontpage - your MySpace templates, your Geocities and Hotmail accounts - and despair. =P

I use Drupal for my business intranet site. It was very easy to set up a basic site, and didn't take too long to get it to do whatever I wanted to do. It has, however, been a pain in the ass to theme. While the functionality of Drupal is jaw-dropping and easily had, the documentation is sparse and the results aren't pretty until you roll up your sleeves and get all PHP on its ass.
posted by dozo at 12:25 PM on December 5, 2006

I haven't yet found a simple yet powerful framework that's easy enough for the average client to maintain content, yet can be customised (by a pro) to just about any layout, configuration or content organisation, so that someone doesn't quickly know that the site's built on XXX.
posted by Artful Codger at 2:15 PM EST on December 5

Agreed. I dislike every CMS system I've had the displeasure to use for these reasons. I've got an opportunity to contribute to building a CMS that will supposedly address these issues. It will be interesting to see how successful or unsuccessful the attempt is.

As an added bonus, i'm in charge of documentation for it, which can also be, if not confusing, rather unstructured and scattered.

To anybody who hasn't been able to get it to work, maybe you should stick with Frontpage?

Not getting something to work pretty much has everything to do with disliking or not taking to the paradigm of the application. You do or you don't. If you can't get it to work it has nothing to do with having FrontPage level ability or intelligence, and everything to do with not being bothered to get it to work. Spending more than 30 minutes is obviously a good thing, but where you draw the line on learning a system that you simply don't take to is completely relative. Differents strokes for different folks and all that.
posted by juiceCake at 12:35 PM on December 5, 2006

juiceCake: I see your point (and I was being a bit hyperbolic). I just reacted to all the anti-Typoists in the thread, especially the digs at Kasper. It doesn't matter if he believes in God, you see, as he is a God himself.
Anywho, typo does not reward casual tinkering, but rather sitting down and learning. If you have the time and the interest, it's well worth your time.
If not... etc.
posted by signal at 2:00 PM on December 5, 2006

I have had much luck with Mambo/Joomla and customizing it so it is unrecognizable as a Joomla site. It is ooooosoooo easy.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 2:39 PM on December 5, 2006

Does Typo3 have anything to do with Typo (rubyonrails blog thingy)?
Doesn't look like it to me, but you never know.

Anyway, the RoR Typo was pretty nice to work with, by which I mean extending and customizing it with a lot of revisions.
posted by bashos_frog at 3:17 PM on December 5, 2006

Heh heh, this guy said it best on the comments of that page:

you do realize that drupal is the only actual cms up there, right? maybe you should stop hanging out at the arcade and come to the bar - you might find something you’d like to fuck.

And Artful Codger was the one who articulated the distinction.

WordPress was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Wordpress site.

Mambo was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Mambo site.

Typo3 was OK if you wanted the site to look like a Typo3 site.

Note that we're in particularly talking about Web Content Management Systems here, as opposed to something like Documentum that's also used extensively for non-web content (Like Volkswagon using it to manage their car manuals, shop manuals, and internal engineering docs and the process of translating them back and forth into 30 languages).

My personal feeling as a consultant in the industry is that, as others have said, a "real" WCMS would allow its features to be employed in a web site of any appearance without a rewrite of code of the site. Perhaps for optimum functionality you'd re-structure all of the code, but if the system's focus is really content management then you should be able to take any static HTML, anywhere, in an existing page or even in another web application, and easily put that under the CMS's control (though not necessarily without any coding - it's just that it should be an easy, commonly-performed, well-documented procedure). So any software where the normal mode of use is that the system gets to take over the entire page and you have to then modify the system internally, modify templates that came with it or something, to get it to look the way you want isn't, in my opinion, a real CMS.
posted by XMLicious at 3:49 PM on December 5, 2006

I've had the (un)fortunate experience of working with many of the CMS's listed, even those that aren't true CMS's.

If you don't need complicated workflow or permissions-based user accounts, I've found I can make Wordpress pretty much do anything. I run sites where you'd have no idea they were powered by WP. We've even written a workflow plugin for Wordpress that takes care of that issue. In terms of customization, it is easily customizable at the template level, where it should be.

I implemented Drupal for a corporate extranet and while fun, it's not something for the feint of heart. It took a while to understand drupal's unique language for ideas and concepts (nodes?) that other CMSs eschew. Really, would documentation hurt so much? I learned more through trial and error with drupal than through any documentation actually shed light on.

Joomla is my next target. It has a lot of active development surrounding it, but, like most CMS's, suffers from the thing I wish for most --

Why can't a CMS recognize it will never be the best at everything, and instead work/focus on providing the best way to integrate others who are the best at the various components?

For instance, the ideal CMS in my world would allow me integrate the blogging platform of my choice (Wordpress, MT, etc.), the forum software of my choice (vBulletin, Phpbb, Simple Machines, etc.), the photo gallery of my choice (Gallery 2, whatever), etc. etc. etc. Everytime I see one of these things try and do "forums" and ignore everything other developers have spent the past decade trying to refine, it just makes me realize how much further we have to go...
posted by docjohn at 4:41 PM on December 5, 2006

(BTW, one other note - just because something isn't a "real CMS" doesn't mean it isn't the best solution to the problem. The distinction is mostly academic.)
posted by XMLicious at 6:58 PM on December 5, 2006

I note that nobody even tried to answer the question "All you people who keep saying "there are no real CMSs there": What constitutes a CMS?"

I still want to know, once you've finished all the dick-waving, what your definition of a CMS is.

You're not saying that CMS doesn't mean "Content Management System" and you're not saying that the blog systems don't manage content, so ... what are you saying?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:57 PM on December 5, 2006

Apparently my favourite content management system is not a content management system, and also sucks.
posted by tehloki at 10:41 PM on December 5, 2006

tehloki : "Apparently my favourite content management system is not a content management system, and also sucks."

It is, however, an excellent band.
posted by Bugbread at 11:50 PM on December 5, 2006

I still want to know, once you've finished all the dick-waving, what your definition of a CMS is.

A chest of drawers.

Seriously though, I have worked on an inhouse asp based "CMS" for the past 5 years. To my mind a CMS is exactly that... Content. Management. System.

Blogging software manages your blogging content online. The software I work with allows you to manage all sorts of information for display online (documents, images, discussions blah blah blah).

At the end of the day they are ALL Content Management Systems.

My underpants are a CMS of sorts.

I also wish people would be a little less anal about stupid jargon.
posted by twistedonion at 4:09 AM on December 6, 2006

Thanks for the "tech-macho", thing though.

That's kind of like saying "thanks for the asshole thing, though."

And it is bullshit, in the Frankfurtian sense: Because the point isn't to get a good CMS, the point is to feel good about your CMS. At least, that's the point as far as I can see. Hence the term. Everything else is rationalization. It doesn't actually matter whether Typo3 is "objectively" good, bad, hard to use, easy to use. What matters is how it makes you feel that you've "mastered" it.

Your response is interesting because of the middle that it excludes: On the one hand, you condemn people who 'tried and tried for 30 minutes'; on the other hand, you spent "several days" working through tutorials in order to get a useful site.

First: Most of us don't have several days to gamble on getting a CMS we'd like.

Second: After investing several days of time, a lot of people get -- well, invested. They find reasons to like what they've got.

As arcane as Drupal is, it took me maybe two hours (using some late 3.x version) to get a site that did what I wanted and pretty much looked the way I wanted. I proceeded to spend many hours tweaking themes, but that was basically a hobby at that point. I'm pretty invested in it by now. It pisses me off, often, and as I said I'm pretty dissillusioned by the options available in content-management systems -- especially regarding layout. But I have several hundred hours invested in customizing and hacking Drupal by now. I'd have to start from scratch on something else.

Incidentally, I did spend about a day and a half doing not much else but trying to figure out Typo3. You must be much more macho than I am, because -- as I said -- I mostly couldn't even get the damn thing to run.

Which leads me to one of my rules of thumb: If it's that difficult to just make it fucking work, it's probably got lots of other problems I don't want to find out about the hard way.

Corrolary: If it's that difficult for me to make it fucking work, how difficult is it going to be for my clients?
posted by lodurr at 5:22 AM on December 6, 2006

docjohn: For instance, the ideal CMS in my world would allow me integrate the blogging platform of my choice (Wordpress, MT, etc.), the forum software of my choice (vBulletin, Phpbb, Simple Machines, etc.), the photo gallery of my choice (Gallery 2, whatever), etc. etc. etc.

Actually, I think that way pretty much lies madness. Or postNuke, which amounts to the same thing.

What would be really cool, though, is if there were a popular framework for integrating different web applications into the same permissions system. In a lot of very complex postNuke, phpNuke and Xoops sites, that's basically what people are doing: taking hacked versions of popular apps like phpBB2, and insinuating them into the CMS's permission system. Otherwise, as you point out, it would make more sense to use the "real" thing.
posted by lodurr at 5:30 AM on December 6, 2006

More often than not, "It's not a real x" is shorthand for "my dick is the only real dick."

Still, there is a basic dichotomy in CMSs that IMLicious and twistedonion brush against. You could characterize it as "web-content" management versus document management.

CMS is the broad, generic term. What we're mostly talking about here is web-content management systems. They deliver content to the web. (The Drupal and Typo3 teams, probably among others, are working at pushing their product into non-web delivery, but it's just not there yet.)

Some of the web-content systems are really sophisticated and powerful (and expensive and scalable). Again, Storyserver is the paradigmatic example, though it's probably a bit long in the tooth by now. It is indisputably a "real" CMS -- christ, it's one of the products the term was coined to describe! It is not functionally different at a conceptual level from phpNuke. Ergo, phpNuke is a "real" CMS.

Whether phpNuke is a good CMS, or whether it meets your requirements for a CMS, are two different, quite distinct questions.
posted by lodurr at 5:38 AM on December 6, 2006

lodurr: Because the point isn't to get a good CMS, the point is to feel good about your CMS.

No, the point is to make a living, which I do, by implementing this and other CMSs for different kind of clients. The fact is, using Typo3 (or other opensource CMSs), you can set up feature rich, permission based site for a large demanding client in very little time, and add as many features as the client needs, for very reasonable prices (since you're not paying for licenses).
Thanks for the armchair psychology, though. And for "tech-macho", once more.
posted by signal at 5:50 AM on December 6, 2006

Thanks for the armchair psychology, though. And for "tech-macho", once more.

That's quite a whine for someone who made the sarcastic "stick to Frontpage" comment.
posted by moonbiter at 6:03 AM on December 6, 2006

What makes you think it was sarcastic?
posted by signal at 6:17 AM on December 6, 2006

That it wasn't sarcastic illustrates another way in which it's bullshit: It displays contempt for his clients. He knows what's best for them, and if they don't understand that, they deserve Frontpage. Which is a pretty severe fate. Almost as severe as postNuke. (To run yet another gag even deeper into the ground...) (Yes, I really dislike do postNuke.)

FWIW, I'm well aware that using "other opensource CMSs", one "can set up feature rich, permission based site for a large demanding client in very little time." I've advocated that approach for years. But from what I can see, using Typo3 to do that for a client without skilled IT resources who have a mandate to learn how to manage it is an error, because it saddles the client with a dependency on the implementor. That's bad client service.

OTOH, using something like Drupal, Joomla/Mambo, .net Nuke, or any one of several other widely used and understood OS CMSs, leaves a client in a position where they can readily locate another resource if you get hit by a truck. Or turn out to be a jerk.
posted by lodurr at 8:08 AM on December 6, 2006

I think CMS means "I'm too stupid to use FTP and write a few PHP scripts".
posted by reklaw at 10:11 AM on December 6, 2006

My, that's some tasty bait you're slinging there.

Either that, or you're an idiot.
posted by lodurr at 12:14 PM on December 6, 2006

A heated debate about CMS and big dicks egos, I've changed my mind... not a bad fpp considering the outcome.

Me, I like my ftp and my cms (whatever works for the client, I need fed). Never used frontpage, tried Typo3 for a few evenings but I've settled on Joomla for exactly the reason lodurr points out - it's easy for the client.

So. How big is my dick?
posted by twistedonion at 1:45 PM on December 6, 2006

So. How big is my dick?

[nervous chuckle /] gosh, well, um... that's not usually... what I mean, is...
posted by lodurr at 2:01 PM on December 6, 2006

So. How big is my dick?

<joke quality="bad">

The lovely lady asked, "How big is your dick?"

I responded, "10."

"Inches?" she asked eagerly.

"No, centimetres," I responded. "I'm Canadian."

</joke>

Of course, insert any metric using country in place of Canadian. It's the first step to seeing the value of a CMS isn't it.
posted by juiceCake at 2:27 PM on December 6, 2006

Don't mind me, but I keep thinking about this because I'm a consultant in the industry and because the first time I saw a wiki I said to myself, "That's not the same kind of thing as the apps I work with, is it?" I could see that most of the problems that my customers were solving with CMS apps wouldn't be addressed by a wiki, but how to articulate the difference?

I think that where people are differing here is than many regard "CMS" as meaning "any sophisticated tool for generating web content," whereas some (like myself, for professional reasons in my case) want to be pickier. But no definition is more or less valid than the others in the grand scheme of things. Regardless of your definition you'll still have to explain yourself and your software from the ground up to anyone you're talking to. And as I said above choice of the best solution for a web site management problem is independent of whether it can be labeled a "CMS" or not.
posted by XMLicious at 2:54 PM on December 6, 2006

Well, wikis are a good example to get at the distinctions. Plain wikis, I would argue, aren't really CMSs -- rather, they're what you described so aptly as a "sophisticated tool for generating web content." (Well, an intentionally unsophisticated tool, actually, but you get the idea.)

But add good indexing to the wiki, put the content into a database, and add tools to let you mashup the content, and you have a CMS.

So, Twiki might not be a CMS. But MediaWiki clearly is.
posted by lodurr at 5:15 AM on December 7, 2006

Hmmm... I'm familiar with MediaWiki insofar as I've been a user of it on the WikiMedia and other sites. But all of the MediaWiki-powered sites I've used have had a nearly identical page layout (and most frequently it's just the logo in the top-left corner (top-right in RTL languages) and maybe the CSS that's different) and an identical navigation system or at least one that's the same on all pages.

From looking at the docs on their site, it looks as if, when you're deploying MediaWiki into an existing site, they aren't expecting you to add a few lines of code into your existing pages and move the content you want wikified into MediaWiki; it looks like you're going to move everything into MediaWiki and the pages of your site are going to now all going to be MediaWiki PHP pages, then you're going to skin it or otherwise modify the MediaWiki system to get it looking the way you want. This seems especially likely to me because I haven't seen screenshots of any user interface other than when links (for editing, etc.) appear in the page on the web site itself. (That's a good usability convention, which most of the CMS vendors I know provide in some form as a UI option - but it looks to me that in MediaWiki it's the only way you normally do things.)

So (though I may be wrong due to my inexperience) it seems to me that, relative to my own definition of CMS, MediaWiki is a (very good) system for generating a web site that is at most a "skinned" version of any other MediaWiki site, rather than a general system designed for managing content across all of the pages and applications on your web site (or multiple web sites) unless they're already designed to work with it. That's not to say it won't someday be that, especially if there are as you say aftermarket "mashup" plugins that adapt it to broader applications, but what it was designed for and what it's being used for in the vast majority of deployments is not a CMS-as-defined-by-XMLicious.

But all I'm really saying is that when you say, "So, Twiki might not be a CMS. But MediaWiki clearly is." I think you have a different definition of CMS from me, which you haven't articulated yet. But feel free to, I'm genuinely interested in hearing it.
posted by XMLicious at 11:10 AM on December 7, 2006

I see your point about MediaWiki, and I kind of agree with it. But there's another fact about it that occurred to me just as I read your reply: That MediWiki is designed (or so I'm told) to publish to other media. In that regard, it's more like a DMS [document management system] than other web CMS systems.

I'm not sure I have any better than gut criteria at the moment. I'll come back if I think of something.
posted by lodurr at 11:56 AM on December 7, 2006