| When choosing the best content management | | | | management system. In other words, if the core |
| system for your project, it is important to weigh | | | | CMS is modified to provide the custom functionality, |
| both the technical and non-technical pros and cons. | | | | how can upgrades or patches from the core CMS |
| Both technical and non-technical reasons can | | | | developers be applied to your modified version. |
| ultimately affect the bottom line cost. Therefore, it is | | | | Radiant's extension system provides this separation |
| not recommended to simply choose a content | | | | of concern. The Radius tagging system of Radiant is |
| management system based solely on technical | | | | fantastic for adding dynamic functionality. It is nice |
| language or feature set. In this article, we will take a | | | | that tags can be added directly to page content |
| look at an open source content management system | | | | rather than some kind of comment or special |
| called Radiant CMS. Radiant is a Ruby on Rails based | | | | character sequence in order to indicate non-static |
| solution that works with a variety of databases. It | | | | content. Non-Technical Reasons to Choose Radiant |
| has a few years of development and a couple | | | | CMS: Radiant has an elegant, intuitive administrative |
| noteworthy deployments. There are technical and | | | | interface. It is not intimidating to the non-technical |
| non-technical reasons why Radiant CMS is a good | | | | user. In fact, the design encourages people to |
| choice for a content management system. Technical | | | | embrace using the system, because they assume it |
| Reasons to Choose Radiant CMS: It's Ruby on Rails | | | | is going to be easy to pick up and learn. The lack of |
| based which can speed development by taking | | | | workflow functionality can be considered a feature in |
| advantage of the convention over configuration | | | | many cases. In competing CMS products, workflow |
| paradigm. In addition, the Radiant code base has | | | | can seem like an attractive feature at first, but is |
| excellent automated coverage in unit tests. This | | | | often hindrance to configure and work around for |
| means the code is well tested and robust. Unit test | | | | projects which require only a few administrators of |
| code coverage can be one aspect to measure when | | | | content. An additional, non-technical reason to choose |
| considering open source content management | | | | Radiant CMS is cost. The project is open source and |
| systems. In fact, we could suggest the amount of | | | | the community of ruby on rails developers and ruby |
| code covered by automated unit and integration | | | | on rails hosting providers is growing, so your cost risk |
| tests should be considered when choosing any open | | | | of obtaining these resources is minimized. Conclusion |
| source library and/or framework. It is an easy | | | | From a technical perspective, the open source, Ruby |
| indicator to measure and compare. But, that is an | | | | on Rails based Radiant CMS makes an excellent |
| entirely different conversation. Radiant CMS also has | | | | choice. From a non-technical perspective, Radiant |
| an excellent extension system. This allows | | | | CMS makes an excellent choice as well. When |
| customizations required by your project to be made. | | | | combining both perspectives, we have had many |
| When choosing a content management system, the | | | | positive project experiences and deployments using |
| ability to add and maintain any customizations should | | | | Radiant over the past year and a half. |
| be an important factor. This point should be | | | | Vince India is a systems administrator with many |
| considered not only from the beginning, but how | | | | years experience using open source CMS software |
| your customizations will evolve as upgrades and | | | | like Radiant. |
| enhancements occur within your chosen content | | | | |