[thelist] content management systems

[Aaron Johnson]

Since no Broadvision or Vignette reps are present, I guess I'll talk more
about Spectra.

To add to what Ray has already said and to give an unbiased (ie: non
Allaire) opinion...

> Do you think your site gives the complete story for spectra? Are there any
> advantages situations where other leading CMS are completely inferior?

No marketing speak is going to really answer your questions about how a
widget does this or that.  However, without having used Broadvision(or
"Fraudvision" as I've heard it called) or Storyserver, I can only comment on
what I know about Spectra from using it

1) Spectra wins hands down on price, $15,000 per box is WAY cheaper than the
aforementioned CMS's.  For a smaller shop, it might sound like a lot, but
what you gain is invaluable.

So, 2) the tools you get make it worth far more than $15,000.  I've been
working with it for almost 6 months now after working with CF for a couple
years, and honestly, I'd rather not EVER work with CF without Spectra again.
Spectra gives you, and thus your clients, so MANY tools to use.  For
instance, PLP's in Spectra allow you to create EASILY create multi-step
forms which in vanilla cf takes alot of work.  Spectra 1.5 has better Site
Modeling capabilities which allow for easy breadcrumb navigation or dynamic
menu creation, both of which would take rolling your own in CF.  You can
workflows... personalization is made easier.   In 1.5, you get versioning
which allows you to maintain a history on your content, when it was changed,
by whom...  And the core of Spectra, creating/editing/updating & deleting
content becomes so much easier... and there's so much more I haven't even
touched on.  If you question the price, ask yourself: "Do I have the
following systems already in house: a) content management, b)
personalization, c) syndication, d) workflows, e) role based security, f)
business intellgience?" Then ask yourself how long it would take to code
each one of those disparate systems.  Then ask yourself when you're going to
have the time to improve on them month after month... you're not.

3) Finally, if you do nothing else but look at the Spectra and play with it
a bit, your coding in vanilla CF will probably radically change.  Remember,
Spectra is open source, you can look at ALL the code.  This means two
things: a) if you have a problem with a tag or a certain way Spectra
functions, you can get your hands dirty and go look at what's going on in
the engine.  You can send an email to Ray and he'll get back to you in
hours.  Can you do that Broadvision or Storyserver? I doubt it.  b) AND,
this also means you get to look at CF code that Allaire itself has written.
Just browsing around the codebase will improve the way you code.. I think
the $15,000 is worth it just to be able to see how the great minds think...


> In your experience what is the most common issue/complaint about Spectra?
> what do you see as it's best competetive advantage?

I disagree with Ray on this one.  From a development perspective, I think
the biggest complaint I've seen so far is the speed.  HOWEVER!  Spectra 1.5,
just released is supposed to improve on that, I have yet to see 1.5 under
load.  And Spectra is only what 1 and half or two years old.. it'll get
faster as rev's come along.  AND because Spectra abstracts it's engine from
the developer with custom tags, I'm guessing that the engine can be and
probably will be moved to Java within the next couple months, which means
that speed will hopefully increase dramatically.


Aaron Johnson, MCSE, MCP+I
Allaire Certified ColdFusion Developer
MINDSEYE, Inc.
<phn>617.350.0339
<fax>617.350.8884
<icq>66172567
ajohnson at mindseye.com

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"Never forget that only dead fish swim with
the stream." -- Malcolm Muggeridge
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