1.
On Content Management,
Technology and Refactoring
Jani Tarvainen, @velmu, 2014/12/19

2.
Agenda and Focus
• History, briefly on today and a practical example of one way forward
• Focus on, but not limited to, Open Source PHP Content Management
• I'll just pretend I know it all and am always right
• In a developer mindset, no business agenda

3.
Content management in the Nordics
• EpiServer, Midgard, SiteCore, eZ
Publish, eScenic, Polopoly, Umbraco...
• The Nordics are a great place to do content management, but
momentum seems to be shifting to central Europe
• There are not enough Content Management Hipsters around
• A lot of CMS enthusiasts (WordPressers, Drupalistas, Joomlagsters,
etc.)
• Finns like to build websites, but not tools to build websites?

4.
A reference (nevermind the Finnish)
• ...toimittama ratkaisu on globaalisti käytettävä Internetin julkaisu- ja
sisällönhallintajärjestelmä. Se mahdollistaa sekä konsernin
maailmanlaajuisesti levitettävän aineiston että maakohtaisen,
paikallisilla kielillä valmistettavan sisällön hallinnan ja julkaisun
keskitetysti yhden järjestelmän kautta. Sisällönhallintajärjestelmän
avulla Kone voi lisäksi rakentaa uusia palvelukokonaisuuksia täysin
itsenäisesti.

5.
Y u no say it's responsive?

6.
We had WAP for
that in 2002.

7.
Content Management Yesterday
• Pay a million dollars for some HTML forms, a database and some
scripts to tie those together.
• Noobs started creating similar software for themselves with LAMP
• Better technology does not always "win", hip and easy does.
• Throwing money at it also worked.

8.
Content Management Today
• Everything and nothing has changed
• The forms, DB and scripts free, but they're still just that in better(?)
tech
• The noobs (and PHP) grew up, "their" software now powers the
internet
• You can really setup a great website without coding skillz
• Known brands dominate, even though anyone can create cola

9.
Content Management Today
• Content management is a commodity nowadays
• Expectations high: "Make it work like Google, Facebook and Apple
do"
• Popular tools were not built for today, they have evolved for today
• 10+ year old feature rich software translates to a lot of legacy
• Wordpress and Drupal onboard: REST API is a sure bet in bullshit
bingo
• Status quo likely to hold a few years, nothing groundbreaking in sight?

10.
Content Management Tomorrow?
• The ferry trip ticket is free, but you're expected to spend at the
taxfree on hosting, support, marketing automation, spam blocking...
• Some thoughts on sustainability:
• Scaling Open Source communities
• Five for the Future

11.
Famous quotes
• "WordPress is too big to fail"
• "Nobody ever got fired for buying Drupal"
• "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a
better Joomla!"
• "If all you have is eZ Publish, everything looks like content to publish”

12.
Why change and is it even possible?
• "The Unix philosophy emphasizes building short, simple, clear,
modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and
repurposed by developers other than its creators."
• Our current tools are like Windows. Victims of their own success.
• Why do we reinvent the wheel? Create abstractions for content, etc.
• Operating systems being cloudified, but we still scaling with "servers"
not services

13.
Why change and is it even possible?
• The previously impossible does happen: Nokia phones sold to
Microsoft as they fight irrelevance
• There needs to be a real payoff for change, not just tech tinkering
• These systems enforce you to work on their terms and you can't often
genuinely swap pieces like in a framework
• Decoupling been trumpeted for years, but most CMSs remain
monoliths

14.
Bergie's decoupling slide
Create - Decoupled CMS interface from Henri Bergius

15.
Examples of change in LAMP CMSs
• WordPress: Nothing fundamental yet, gradual improvements
• Large scale change will be monumental (not core, but the plugins)
• Giant user and developer base to please
• "We are a framework!"
• Typo3: Write your own PHP web framework
• No, just no.

16.
Examples of change in LAMP CMSs
• Drupal 8: Introducing more common components
• Major technical improvements to Drupal with Symfony Components
• Drupalisms, but with new stuff... a bit of a bastard.
• Some developer upheaval: a credible Drupal 7 fork
• Apostrophe: Rebuilding from scratch (Symfony1 -> Express.js)
• Lots of work and two parallel versions
• An interesting project to follow!

17.
Refactoring
eZ Publish

18.
Some truths about eZ Publish
• eZ Publish is not easy!
• eZ Publish will not take over the world!
• eZ Publish will not be as easy to hack as WordPress!
• eZ Publish does not "have a module for that" like Drupal!
• eZ Publish can still be a good choice for some use cases!

19.
Solid basic concepts since, like... forever
• One application with one or more content repositories (with a tree)
• Perform queries on content (object) or location (node)
• Sites are configured views to a repository:
• Site matching with domain, path, combo
• Site root location
• Languages
• Designs…

20.
Starting point
• Started in 1999, ticks "all the boxes" in the feature lists ('memba
these?)
• Custom MVC framework, DB, based on 2002 PHP4 OOP (static
methods)
• Core product has rich text editing, locations, versioning,
multilanguage, Solr search engine, auditing, web store, full XML
content, REST API, etc...
• Limited popularity due to complexity and learning curve
• It works, but clearly the end is nigh

21.
Refactoring eZ Publish
• Move to full stack Symfony2 with 100% backwards compatibility
• No DB schema change for legacy storage engine
• Storage engines are pluggable, currently legacy and legacy_solr
(Elastic Search being worked on)
• Refactoring legacy functionality gradually to services
• Symfony3 in the future is an evolution, not a revolution

22.
Refactoring eZ Publish
• Leveraging Symfony2 for authentication, routing, Doctrine
DBAL...Uses Symfony2 bundles
• (Flysystem, Stash, Imagine, HTTPCache...)
• Existing framework documentation applies
• It took around 2 years for a version to be honestly great
• New admin interface and other changes in 2015
• Just one Open Source eZ Platform

23.
Relevant versions*
• 4.7: The last legacy version
• 5.4: The last version with Symfony2 and legacy support
• 6.x: Symfony2 stack only
• API: eZ API and Domain objects only
* Community versions use YYYY.MM versioning

24.
Working with 2014.11 - the great
• Woot, it is HMVC through and through. Symfony2 devs feel at home!
• Upgrade from a 2008 eZ Publish worked
• You can gradually refactor your legacy site(s):
• Use a mixture of legacy and new template code
• Access legacy kernel anywhere (in a closure)
• Add new sites without legacy functionality calls
• Caching is Symfony awesome
• PHPStorm autocompletion for API kicks ass

25.
Working with 2014.11 - the bad
• You'll need to know a lot to get started and it's work in progress
• Documentation is not really great, no established good practices
• Would need more "how-to" articles to gain popularity
• Symfony template functionality still not teh bestest (theme
inheritance)
• Rapid development (coding can't touch Drupal clicking, WP
hackability)
• Performance? I guess well built Symfony2 scales enough for most
needs

26.
Working with 2014.11 - the hmmm…
• So it's nice for developers, but no beef for the customers yet
• You can do things faster in XYZ if you know it
• Still limited adoption
• No set public site architecture (think Drupal behaviours, etc.)
• Symfonysms apply

27.
Divide and conquer
• Use best from elsewhere, don't use the CMF/CMS for everything
• Full REST API and a client lib for single page apps (Angular, Ember...)
• Leverage Elcodi or Sylius components for eCommerce
• Push emails to RabbitMQ for sending, or other batch jobs?
• No need to include the whole stack to use just the API in your apps

28.
Some code and stuff
• ezstart, a demo setup
• EzXmlSitemapBundle
• eZ Publish Docker
• Using legacy code
• Signals reference
• eZ Publish Public API
• eZ Publish REST API
• HTTP Caching

29.
Cool links of the day
• Sulu CMF
• Keystone.js
• Bolt CMS
• October CMS
• PHPCR
• ORO CRM
• Developing with prismic.io
• Contentful for developers
• Symfony and CMS: Comparing Bolt, Drupal 8 and eZ Platform

30.
Thanks