[depolitic]

Hi - I am looking to building my own site, based on I am hoping an existing open source solution preferable based in Java.

Now I have been searching high and low through all sorts of projects, coming across
OpenCMS, Magnolia, which call themselves CMS's, then their are Blogs and Wikis, which seem to be much the same thing except the user can edit a Wiki page or add a comment to a Blog, but their is no reason why this could not be done via a CMS as well.

However, having had a look at the a whole bunch of stuff, I am having a hard time defining these terms as to what is or makes something a CMS, or a Blog, or a Wiki.

Anyone dare to define them for me? Are they really that distinct?

It seems that all are a much of a muchness, maybe having an extra feature here or their but nothing that is exclusive to itself.

Secondly has anyone played with Blojsom?

http://wiki.blojsom.com/wiki/display...bout%2Bblojsom

Interesting because Apple has adopted as the engine for its upcoming Tiger blogging server. Why?

While I have installed it and played with Blojsom to get a fair idea, - I see it is as a bit of a mess and not that great. - All flat file and not very feature rich, and still needs skills to manipulate and manage the system is also used Velocity by Jakarta, now it was easy to follow and it seems to be competing in the same space as JSP, however, I cannot see how Velocity is easier then JSTL. Looks like a shell script hack with all the #if and #end stuff.

Then I have played with Magnolia, this looks all promising, however is very immature, and has very little developer support. But I do love the fact that you can drag and drop page components on the fly and make visual site changes via a web browser, no code, or xml files to mange or change. Way cool.

I did a search for blogging solutions in Java, and only about 4 came back with Blojsom being the only one not in beta or alpha development.

While it seems in theory nice to get others to build the guts of a system for you, I am feeling that you to some extent get held ransom to their design decisions.

I have played with a basic CMS / Blog / Wiki of my own with mixed results, but it is slow and boring building from scratch is it worth it?

Any thoughts.

[smeger]

I consider a CMS to be a superset of both "blog" and "wiki". A CMS is just what it says - a content management system. You should be able to make either a blog or a wiki using a CMS, but you can't make a wiki out of a blog or a blog out of a wiki. And a good CMS lets you do other stuff, too, like integrate a shopping cart of forums or whatever...

A blog is something that lets you post articles easily and lets your users read 'em easily. That's it.

I don't really know what makes a wiki a wiki, aside from the fact that users can edit content and words are automatically hyper-linked together.

(A lot of blog systems have plugins that make them more like CMS's, by the way)

[Arkham_c]

Originally, CMS, Blogs, and Wikis were for different things. Blogs were for a person to share their thoughts with the world. Wikis were for the world to collaborate together on information and documentation. And CMS were a repository for data, text, and files in a searchable format.

Over time, blogs have added CMS features and CMS have added blog plug-ins. Neither really eclipses the functionality of a wiki.


As to JSTL versus Velocity, Velocity is MUCH simpler and easier to use. There are only a total of about 8 tags in velocity, so learning it is quick and painless. And velocity forces you to do MVC separation because there is no model manipulation allowed in Velocity. It's all view technology. I really like it a lot (better than JSTL or Struts).

[depolitic]

so in velocity you cannot build a whole site like with JSTL or JSP.

And you would need to have like beans and servlets to perform Model and control aspects of your site.

MMMMMmmm. Wonders about it.

So maybe I should go with a CMS and then add the blog and wicki feature to it.

However the only decent CMS in Java I have found is Magnolia, easy to set up and configure but a little immature.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by depolitic:
so in velocity you cannot build a whole site like with JSTL or JSP.

And you would need to have like beans and servlets to perform Model and control aspects of your site.

You should never design a whole site in JSP or JSTL. If you do, your logic and content are mixed, and you cannot change one without completely changing the other. If you use MVS separation like Velocity offers, you can replace the entire GUI design in a few minutes instead of days or weeks.

[depolitic]

You can make a whole site in JSP and JSTL - just have seperate files for each aspect of the MVC.

If it is a basic site, their is no reason why this will not work. Often people make demo sites this way, then convert that MC pages to beans and servlets at a later date.

Java is so complex, so people always take the most compex path to everthing. But it does not need to be that way.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by depolitic:
You can make a whole site in JSP and JSTL - just have seperate files for each aspect of the MVC.

If it is a basic site, their is no reason why this will not work. Often people make demo sites this way, then convert that MC pages to beans and servlets at a later date.

Java is so complex, so people always take the most compex path to everthing. But it does not need to be that way.

It'll work, but it's still ugly and too complex. The simplest solution I have found is a VelocityServlet and a velocity template. It's very simple, it looks good, requires no beans, no crazy tags, it's fast, and it works.

Here's a simple example of a VelocityServlet:

Code:
public class ContactLookupServlet extends SmartVelocityServlet
{
    public Template handleRequest(HttpServletRequest p_request,
        HttpServletResponse p_response, Context p_context) throws IOException
    {
        // Add something to the context
        Vector contacts = ContactManager.getAllContacts();

        // Put the text back on the form to redisplay.
        p_context.put("contacts", contacts);

        // Get the template
        Template tmpl = findTemplate("contact_lookup.vm");
        return tmpl;
    }
}

Then in your template (which is just HTML), you can get to the vector contacts as $contacts. Very simple and straightforward.

[depolitic]

So what is the use of JSTL or JSP (I never use JSP scriptlets) why is it part of the standard SUN J2EE solution and not Velocity.

I am also tiered I think of every day their being a new wing bang solution - I am getting out of IT, I just want to build my own little site, for fun.

I just showing my age and my head hurts.

I also do not like the idea that I have wasted my time with the official method jstl and now I have to go and beat another dead horse - that is a sure winner.

Just like the last one, that died the stable.

[depolitic]

I have been pocking around the Jakarta site - and looking at Java templating - now it seems like theirs all these projects all claiming to be templating solutions - why so many?

Hive-Mind
Hive-Mind is a services and configuration micro-kernel; a framework for creating complex applications from simple Java objects and interfaces

Tapestry
Tapestry is a web application framework based on highly reusable components within a very pure Model-View-Controller pattern.

Turbine
A model-view-controller framework for constructing web applications with either Velocity or JavaServer Pages.

Velocity
Velocity is a general purpose Java-based template engine.

Is their a way to compare them, - I am looking for simple not mind boggling mind learning **** - I just want a way to easy separate my view from my MC, and have it be fairly standard. I am worry of any project just drying up and ending up in a heap of ****.

Or is their a more SUN approved approach - I know struts is very popular but sound like a **** load more complex then my head needs.

I am a designer after all not a programmer.

[Angus_D]

If you want something with a lower entry bar, you could try Mambo (GPL, PHP). If you want something well-architected an flexible, you could try Zope.

The reason there are so many frameworks is that they all go about things in a different way. Tapestry looks quite cool, I hear it's somewhat modelled on WebObjects.