Livecode Content Management System

[Robert Brenstein]

I have been using LC to generate complete websites but I use LC only as 
a generator of HTML pages from data files and database content, using 
CSS for theming and HTML hierarchical template files that call LC 
functions through merge. I believe that Richard Gaskin is still selling 
a commercial product that does this in a more generic way.

I have been thinking for a while to convert my setup into a more proper 
CMS but gave up at the planning stage once I realized how much effort 
that is. I also started playing with revIgniter and am really impressed 
with what it offers, but I came to a similar conclusion like you.

I actually had a real CMS developed in MetaCard years ago. It was 
developed as a special-purpose product for a client and not a generic 
CMS. It broke because at the time I did not use proper modularizing and 
abstraction layers and keeping it compatible with the database engine 
became impossible at some point.

BTW, wasn’t there a commercial CMS produced in LC (or whatever it was 
called at the time)? I think its name was Hemingway or sth like that.

Robert

On 1 Dec 2017, at 2:56, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm looking for (initial) interest, previous experience, comments, 
> etc.
>
> Every few [ = 4 to 8] months for the last few [= 2 to 3] years, I've 
> been either building a new website for someone, or making significant 
> changes/enhancements to an existing one. Almost every time, unless the 
> changes are very small, I've decided that I really *should* convert it 
> to use a 'proper' CMS - e.g. Wordpress.
>
> And I've tried - but every time I've foundered on not being able to 
> get the site to be what I want, or realizing (believing?) that to do 
> what I want requires real development skills within WP - and therefore 
> too much of a learning curve and/or too much PHP.  Or, I've decided 
> that to make it a bearable experience I need to use multiple add-ons 
> (plugins, themes, etc.) and then found that the plugins I spent hours 
> investigating and choosing were incompatible. Or were just not well 
> enough documented.
>
> [ I won't tell you how often I've found a (video) tutorial, wasted an 
> entire hour or more watching it - then realized that it was for an 
> out-of-date version of the plugin, or an old version of Wordpress, and 
> that all the helpful screenshots showed me how to modify settings / 
> actions that didn't exist, or had no obvious equivalent, in the 
> current versions. ]
>
> Twice, having run into brick walls with Wordpress, I've tried other 
> CMSs (Concrete5 and ??Dolphin??) with similar results - poor / 
> out-of-date docs have left me stranded - 80% of the way towards doing 
> what I wanted and unable to get any further.
>
> So in every case until now, I've given up, made tweaks / extensions to 
> my own "home-grown" web site tool(s), and - so far - completed my 
> enhancements in less time than I had wasted trying the "real" CMS.
>
> I put that down to:
>  - the power of Livecode
>  - the power of revIgniter  (thank you ! again, Ralf)
>  - my impatience in trying to learn new tools
>
> But now I have a new, bigger opportunity / challenge - I've been asked 
> to build a web site (actually two unrelated web sites) which are 
> bigger and more complex, and for which I absolutely do not want to 
> become the de facto on-going (content) maintainer.
>
> So, I've decided to build LCMS - a Livecode Content Management System.
>
> It will be (very loosely) based on what I think are the useful ideas 
> in Wordpress (but without any tendency towards blogs). It will be 
> relatively simple.
>
> It won't be:
>  - smooth, slick and all-powerful like WP
>  - able to support (initially, and for some time) real independent 
> development of themes, plugins, auto-loading and updating, etc. etc. 
> (yada, yada, yada ...) - that might be done in a few [= 2 to 20 years]
>
> It will be :
>  - based on Livecode (and extensible in LC)
>  - (I hope) simple and easy (for a LC developer) to understand, use 
> and extend
>  - complete with at least one complete theme (based on Botstrap)
>  - (at some point) open source, on github, etc. under MIT liceense
>  - documented in some old-fashioned way (i.e. written, searchable, 
> skimmable tutorials - few or no Youtube videos to waste your time)
>
> OK - enough of the advertising pitch :-)
>
> Here are the requests for input ....
>
> 1.  has anyone tried this before ? and did you succeed ?  or why did 
> you stop ? any foreseeable problems to contend with ?
>
> 2. am I just tilting at windmills and I should just go back to 
> studying WP and its plugins ?
>
> 3. the current prototype is based on (or rather 'is written over' 
> revIgniter).
>
> I have very conflicting opinions of revIgniter
>     + it's wonderful, it has a huge quantity of things it "just 
> does" (in a well documented, well tested, etc. way)  so that I don't 
> need to think or learn about them, etc. - I love it.
>     - (a) it is intimately tied to LC server, with heavy dependency 
> on 'include' so it's impossible to (as I would want to do) test 99% of 
> my code in the IDE, with debugging etc. help.
>     - (b) I *really* dislike the "rigLoadView" scheme - it forces 
> (or seems to force) far too much co-mingling of code and content 
> within the view files, and has no clear way to use "themes"
>
> The current version of LCMS simply ignores the 'View' (and 'Model') 
> part of revIgniter, and generates all its output based on  ''pages' 
> and 'themes'  (and 'menus') - but it sill benefits from all the other 
> parts of revIgniter).
>
> do you think it would be worth the (considerable) effort needed to 
> remove the dependency on rvIgniter in the hope of benefiting from the 
> reduced complexity, hopefully lower overhead, easier debugging a 
> higher percentage within the Ide, etc. ?
>
> Thanks for any suggestions, input, etc.
>
> Alex.
>
>
>
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