[thelist] RE: News.com gets a facelift

Daniel J. Cody djc at starkmedia.com
Wed Jan 24 11:19:38 CST 2001


Madhu Menon wrote:

 
> And lastly, Dan asked:

>> Do you know if they're still using Vingette as their CMS?(or was it
>> something else) Judging by the URL's it still looks that way..
> 
> 
> While they still *are* using Vignette for their CMS, they're not totally
> happy with it. They're building their own CMS using JSP from scratch. I
> don't have any idea of when they'll actually roll it out though. Possibly

I think its interesting that they're spending a considerable amount of 
time and money on re-inventing the wheel. There are plenty of CMS 
systems out there that cost less than what it must cost for a group of 
developers for 9 - 15 months, not to mention the ones that are free.

I think its interesting because the Disney Interactive Group which 
was/is responsible for all the go.com sites also spent a considerable 
amount of time and resources rolling their own CMS/Templating System 
only to end up open sourcing it. Obviously I'm not against open source 
by any stretch of the imagination, quite the opposite :) But I just 
think that maybe they - and perhaps any company that chooses to 
re-invent the proverbial wheel - may have made a mistake in the 
time/cost of such a project and for the *real* need, outside of 
marketing speak, for such a custom product.

But then I take a look at the custom CMS that runs our evolt site and 
shut up.

> middle of this year. Vignette is a real pain apparently. Did you know that
> they use over 200 different templates for stories? And sites like Gamecenter
> and Builder (till recently) were done manually using just SSI. Shhh... don't
> tell anyone I told ya' that.

Ouch.

> BTW, on an OT note, Dan, what's with the new starkmedia.com email address?
> Change your job?

Ya, I changed jobs about a month ago actually, way to notice ;) 
<personal blabbering>
I moved down to Milwaukee finally to in early Decemeber. The move, 
coupled with some issues at my former place of employment, sent me 
looking for new work.. I landed a job at a mid sized web dev. 
company(business websites mostly) as the 'systems administrator' I help 
some of the developers out with the CF some of the time, do a bit of 
client liason stuff, still doing my Linux/Oracle talks, and keep things 
humming on the backend. Its a pretty good job right in downtown, and I'm 
pretty stoked to be in Milwaukee now.. things are going good :)

Thanks for asking ;)
</pb>

ttyl

.djc.





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