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Posted on August 6th, 2009 by Tom Arah
CMS and CSS: Problem Solved
A while back I wrote about my belief that the future for web authoring lies beyond static web pages with Web 2.0 and with the big three content management systems (CMS): Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal. I also wrote that one of the major stumbling blocks to this happening was the appalling state of CMS-based design.
I’m glad to say that I think I’ve come across a near-perfect solution…
There really shouldn’t be a problem in the first place: a CMS provides efficient, flexible and scalable centralized control over content while CSS (the Cascading Style Sheet markup language) is designed to provide efficient, flexible and scalable centralized control over presentation. In theory it’s a match made in heaven.
In practice it’s anything but. The problem is that creating a comprehensive style sheet that takes in every possible design element (heading, table, block, list, menu, button and so on) as well as every foible of CSS and, crucially, every bug in the various browser implementations (IE take a bow) is way beyond most users’ capabilities.
The current best workaround for the average user brave enough to move beyond the in-built default themes is to take advantage of the designs that you find on free template sites. It’s a huge advance but it’s only a partial solution. Off-the-shelf templates inherently mean design that is neither unique to your site nor tailor-made to your content.
Now however there’s an alternative.
At first sight Artisteer looks seriously unpromising – an automatic theme creator that generates unique designs every time you click the Suggest Design button sounds like a recipe for design disaster. In practice it really delivers the goods as I discuss in the full Artisteer 2.1 review . And with version 2.x’s ability to export your designs as ready-to-go themes for Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal you can begin exploring your new custom design live on your site within minutes.
With Artisteer’s various Suggestion commands you can quickly hone in on an overall look-and-feel, but what about the inevitable tweaks and iterations involved in any real world design process? It’s here that Artisteer really proves itself a worthy partner to CMS / CSS with its own beautifully efficient, flexible and scalable centralized design engine letting you take ever more granular control over your presentation as-and-when you need it.
The end result, as I say in the review, is that Artisteer makes it “child’s play to automatically create fully customised tailor-made themes that look good and work well”. By providing the bridge that connects CMS and CSS, Artisteer could be the key to unlocking the full and extraordinary potential of both. I strongly recommend giving the free trial a spin.
Tags: artisteer, cms, css, digital design, drupal, joomla, wordpress
Posted in: Real World Computing, Software
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13 Responses to “ CMS and CSS: Problem Solved ”
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August 6th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
[...] is accessed. The 5 minute interval, is itself, configurable using [...] CMS and CSS: Problem Solved – pcpro.co.uk 08/06/2009 A while back I wrote about my belief that the future for [...]
August 7th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Tom, remember that the “big 3″ CMSes that you mention (Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla) are very much aimed at small to medium sites. They lack most of the features that large organisations need for corporate sites, such as LDAP integration, workflow, audit, rollback, and so on.
They are all very good products, but only for a specific market. Please don’t give people the impression that they can be used to replace absolutely any existing static-html site.
August 7th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Hi Robert. It’s true that I’m mainly addressing those producing small to mid-range sites (especially in the context of Artisteer) as a cms could be overkill if you’re only talking about a handful of pages while large corporate sites already have their own custom systems (mainly data-driven rather than static)
However I wouldn’t underestimate the reach of the cms approach. Even for small sites, users now expect features such as commenting, feeds, blogs and end user content contribution which static page handling can’t give them.
And at the top end I think that Drupal is more scalable, powerful and extensible than you seem to give it credit for: content versioning and rollback is built in to core, basic workflow handling is also in core (via actions) with plenty of contributed modules extending it and, though I haven’t tried them, there are also a number of LDAP modules.
You’ll see from the list at http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites that there are plenty of pretty large sites from the likes of Infoworld, Oxfam, Nokia, MIT and The Onion that are choosing to build on the Drupal framework rather than trying to do everything themselves.
August 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am
It is totally misleading and propagating misinformation to say that Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla are the big three CMS’s. For one thing there are as many CMS packages as there are websites so there isn’t really any loyalty to a particular CMS. You choose the one that is best for the job in hand.
If we presume though that there is a big 3 of CMS products then these three are not in it at all. Vignette, Typo3 and IBM Websphere are all vastly superior products on a technical basis. These are generally enterprise CMS packages, although I have deployed Typo3 on many smaller websites.
The three you have listed probably get the most press, therefore are most known, but that’s because they are bloggers buzzwords.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Clearly there are other options and they might well suit your needs best.
However you don’t give any hard facts to doubt “the big three’s” popularity or status (see the cms market share survey by water and stone based on parameters such as rate of adoption and brand strength which fully supports the received wisdom – “executive summary: three leading brands emerge” http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2008OpenSourceCMSMarketSurvey.pdf).
It’s true this argument becomes self-fulfilling – bloggers talk about the most popular products and so they become more popular – but that also becomes self-reinforcing. The biggest strength of an open-source cms is its community-provided modules (and support) so the bigger the community, the better the platform.
Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla might not be your big three but they are generally perceived as such and are getting bigger all the time.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
My point was that “big three” is the accepted vernacular for the most powerful (car manufacturers, technology companies, actors on a TV show etc). Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla are percieved by nobody I know in the industry as the big three (I have been a web developer since 1996). They are probably the best prosumer choices (and in a lot of cases professional choice), but it shouldn’t be claimed that they are the best of their breed. There is far too much that they can’t do or don’t do well. Just because a product has good market penetration and is a household name doesn’t mean it is actually any good. As far as I can see, “the big three” is just a term you are hoping to coin before anyone else does in the field of CMS.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Well I wouldn’t claim to have coined the phrase or to be the first to talk about them as such (as a quick search confirms).
And I’d say that most people would use “big” in terms of market share / popularity rather than power (eg car manufacturers, technology companies, actors on a TV show etc).
August 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
OK, let’s go with your definition of big 3. The fact still stands that it is only at one level that they are most popular products. Enterprise level has a completely different big three. Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress are so populat at prosumer level because they don’t need to you have any programming skills to get a site up and working.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
It’s true that that’s a major appeal especially to the traditional static page-based designer and largely explains their popularity.
However I’d argue that Drupal in particular is also designed with true scalability and the programmer’s needs to the fore. And precisely because of this mix of power and popularity it can offer an unbeatable pool of modules – http://drupal.org/project/modules – either ready-to-use for the designer or fully customisable by the programmer.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Drupal is certainly capable of professional level websites but for large collaborative websites or enterprise level it’s nowhere near. The workspace support is poor and so is the workflow support. It also lacks several authentication methods that are useful at enterprise level (Kerberos and Samba spring to mind).
If you are comfortable using Drupal I’d suggest trying out Typo3. When I audited the two systems (as well as Joomla) I found that Typo3 is much easier to configure as it provides a lot more programming hooks. The learning curve is much steeper than Drupal though.
August 12th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Regardless of the CMS, I like the new layout of the PCPro website – it is much easier to navigate and see what’s new. Good work!
August 12th, 2009 at 8:41 am
P.S. Beyond the world of PHP, Umbraco is a lovely Open Source .NET CMS (though personally I’m a php WordPress man).
August 12th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Yes a massive improvement isn’t it? Wish I could claim the credit but I just write for the site. I think the main man involved is Barry Collins http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/author/barry-collins