Hello guys,
I'm back after some months away...
I wanted to create my small website looking like a website (and not like a
blog) where I could express myself (even if I don't think it is very
interesting ) and where I could test some technologies at the same time...
my live public laboratory...
I have been working with some CMS for some time now and also with wikis...
Beyond the common discussions about the differences between CMS and Wiki I
can find everywhere, I still think both approaches are compatible and
complementary...
Personnally, I prefer writing, formatting with Wiki syntaxes but I also like
skinning and authoring/publishing mechanisms in CMS...
I have decided to make an experimentation by designing my website using
Wiki+CMS...
I have chosen:
- Magnolia CMS since it's designed around a Java lightweight architecture,
fully implementing a JCR storage (this was one of my interests also), it
provides publishing workflow between a private and public instances and it
provides a nice skinning and authoring mechanism... There are lots of
defaults and poor docs in it but this is not the question here.
- XWiki for the wiki because as George says:"What else????"... I also
decided to use only XWiki/2.0 syntax to test it deeply...
I wanted:
- to use the CMS as the content aggregator and XWiki as one content provider
- to use XWiki remotely and enable content retrieval from several XWikis for
example
- to integrate XWiki pages as paragraphs into a magnolia page containing
other contents
- to allow remote XWiki edition using a "simplified" XWiki editor
So I have developped:
- a Magnolia module which manages the creation/edition/insertion of XWiki
paragraphs into Magnolia. The XWiki pages are retrieved remotely from one
XWiki server using the XMLRPC API for the time being...
- a "light" XWiki editor based on velocity templates from the basic XWiki
skin.
You can see the resulting website in this site:
http://www.mandubian.org
It's a draft site so please don't look too much at the quantity of content
(and the quality also ;) )
I will build progressively the website, deliver, document and improve the
XWiki/Magnolia module also and bring new ideas also...
This is a private server so don't be surprised when it is not very quick!
regards
Pascal Voitot