54e8bd754e6fa939cc26281e3d0230c6
Mockups and Prototype of New CMS
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
tuxmachines.org is nearly 170,000 Drupal pages already; Techrights is over 34,000 WordPress pages)
THE Content Management System (or software, CMS for short) conundrum is unsolved. We've already explained the pervasive bloat problem, the growing chains of dependency, the security risks, and -- overall -- the technical debt. I've been dealing with Web sites creation for 25 years and with various CMS packages for over 20 years. WordPress is a monster, Drupal is not easy to manage (especially for administrators) and a lot of old systems are no longer maintained/developed.
"Unlike caching, there's no need for hash tables and re-computation of pages."So a couple of weeks ago we decided to develop our own with the intention of keeping it super-simple and light. The chain of dependencies is minimal and we'll probably run it on Alpine, without Microsoft systemd.
The video above is a quick tour through the latest slate/state of things. It looks something like this:
Given a week or two we'll hopefully have a publicly-accessible beta of some kind, not yet a migrated site. This can lessen complexity and server load.
Yes, this shows tuxmachines.org, not Techrights, but if the former site's migration goes well, we shall consider doing the same with Techrights, for reasons that are explained in the video (faster workflow, more resource efficiencies, more extensibility).
This post isn't about any issues but about platforms that cover the issues. Having said that, it helps explain what's wrong with the Web and how it can be tamed. Static pages are the only pages to be served with the new CMS, but there's a database of all the pages, from which we plan to generate GemText files as well. The static pages are in effect exported from it. Unlike caching, there's no need for hash tables and re-computation of pages. ⬆