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Posted 09 Apr 2015 by
(/users/rolandbenedetti)Roland Benedetti (/users/rolandbenedetti)
Rating: (5 votes)
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Open source is key to the future of CMS
development
Content management is a mix of development, design, marketing, information
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architecture, user experience, and more. In the past 15 years, content management
has evolved, but its foundation—how users create, manage, and deliver
content—has remained relatively stable.
Websites are still a core asset of most businesses, which means the CMS has
become increasingly important. For developers who are building on top of a CMS,
how the systems have changed is apparent.
Made for builders
Content management systems help developers create unique digital experiences,
so they can't be turnkey solutions. They must be platforms on which to build. They
need to provide toolkits, frameworks, and development infrastructures for designers
and developers.
One factor in the evolution of content management systems is open source
development, which has contributed to the transformation in several ways,
including:
Opening up source code This enables developers to work faster and gives them
more control. Simple things like not having to wait for the license key from a vendor
to start working or having the ability to try a product before buying have helped
streamline development.
Opening up APIs: One of the main things developers do when customizing and
extending a CMS is connect applications together. To picture what a distributed
world we live in, think of the evolution from distributed ORB
(http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/ORB.html) to the first generation of
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The
Open
CMS
web services using SOAP, and now to the latest standardization of RESTful
communication. The programmatic interfaces of applications has dramatically
improved, making it easier to mash applications together.
Simplifying development processes and tools: Solutions such as GitHub and
other developer-created tools help increase efficiency. Continuous integration
techniques and tools to help automate and streamline the whole process from
coding, testing, and deploying add to developer efficiency. Another more recent
example is the progress in virtualization and deployment systems, including Docker,
which promises to improve developer lives.
What's next?
Efforts and investments in the next few years will help modernize the most forgotten
and outdated part of CMSs: the end-user editorial and marketing user experience
(UX). CMSes will remain platforms that we build on, and possibly even more of a
development platform. Developer expectations will continue to grow and developer
experience will remain key.
When thinking about future needs and expectations, there are still a lot of areas
where platforms will have to evolve and improve. More decoupled approaches, like
the one David Bachmann recently wrote about (/business/15/3/decoupling-
your-cms), may develop further.
Client-side technology—whether it's browser based or application based—will have
more impact on the platform. Content storage technology will keep developing, as
will development practices.
Open source will remain the best way to achieve a better developer experience,
and as it grows in popularity, engaging with neighbor technology will become easier.
Reusing existing components and becoming more distributed will be less complex.
Thanks to open source, developers are able to work faster and more efficiently,
which is good for business. But this is just the beginning. Open source has taken
the CMS development experience to a whole new level, and it doesn't look like it's
slowing down anytime soon.
This article is part of the The Open CMS column (/tags/open-
cms-column) coordinated by Robin Muilwijk. Share your stories
about working with open source content management systems
(CMS) and platforms like Drupal, Joomla, Plone, WordPress, and
more.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
3 of 7 10/04/15 14:36

How Moodle is driven by
user and community
feedback (/life
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The benefits of
decoupling your CMS
(/business
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your-cms)
Why we ditched our
legacy framework for
Symfony (/business
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we-ditched-
our-legacy-
framework-
symfony)
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Roland Benedetti is an IT professional
with more than 15 years of experience
in the fields of content management
and digital user experience for leading
software vendors, integrators, media,
and e-business companies. With a
mix of technical, functional, and management
skills, Roland focuses primarily on digital innovation, which
often implies open source development models. Roland is
currently heading the Product and Marketing departments
of eZ Systems, a software company delivering eZ
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