Only once in a great while does a piece of software come along that does it’s job very well. Today I am going to write about a content management system that I use daily.

This is my “Is it good?” software test:

1. Does it do the job, as opposed to just not working?
2. Does it do the job well, as opposed to doing it sorta well, or not very well?
3. Do I enjoy using it, as opposed to being a frustrating experience?
4. Is the learning curve easy, as opposed to being very difficult?
5. Do I keep using it, as opposed to doggedly searching for something better?

First, a little background:
I have had real-life experience in these programs: Joomla/Mambo, Drupal, Etomite, various Nuke variations, FrontPage (shudder), Contribute, and few others too minor to be worth mentioning here.

Before I get the the good one, Allow me to go on a teeny-tiny tangent for the sake of contrast.
I’ll use the obvious negative example: FrontPage. Hell’s own website will be built in FrontPage, and it will be maintained by Hitler and Blackbeard.

I once was hired to redesign a site that had been managed in FrontPage. It was in such a state of atrophy that it needed a complete re-do. However, demons were at work; and it was not meant to be. The owner insisted on the continued use of FrontPage. The site was big, like a dungeon labyrinth; and it consisted of about 6500 files, and was over 60MB in total.

I digress. I could devote an entire blog post to the evils of FrontPage, and it wouldn’t be the first.

Enter Etomite. “Fast, Free, and Infinitely Flexible”

Etomite (pronounced ee - toe - might) is an amazing and unknown gem in the rough.
I first discovered Etomite about three years ago while searching for a bloat-free CMS. What I found was just that, and more. I ran across it at opensourcecms.com - where Etomite used to be in the “Simple” category.

What Etomite is:
Etomite is an open source php/mySQL “web development platform” and a bloat-free, OpenSource (GPL) Content Management System. It facilitates website management very well, and is expandable to a great degree. It runs on your standard LAMP server, as well as IIS.

What Etomite is not:
Etomite is not a “portal.” It doesn’t do forums or threaded commentary, It’s not a blog, or an online community.

Out-of-the-box features (from the Etomite website)

• WYSIWYG Document Editing
  Create and edit your documents just like you were writing a document in a word-processor. Add tables, images and formatted text without any knowledge of HTML.
• Security
  Worried about security? Don’t be. Etomite provides access permissions so that you retain total control over which users have access to which parts of Etomite.
• Scheduled Publishing
  Schedule your documents to be published and unpublished to and from your website at given dates, which you configure.
• Modern & Intuitive Interface
  The Etomite Content Management System has been designed from the start to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. View screenshots to see just how easy to use it is.
• Free Support
  Free support is provided via the Support Forums giving you access to a library of information and solutions, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
• Small Footprint
  A default install of Etomite takes just over 2MB of webspace, but will save you more than that in recouped space from pages that are no longer needed once website content sits within your Etomite template.
  The installation also requires around 350 Kb database space for the default site.
• Unlimited Functionality
  Because Etomite allows you to add your own PHP code, via Snippets, the functionality is virtually unlimited.
• Template Driven
  Your content is delivered encased within fully customisable templates, giving you a seamless join between Etomite, your content, and what your visitors experience.
• Respects Web Standards
  As the Etomite site itself shows, Etomite Content Management System respects W3C standards. There is absolutely nothing in Etomite to prevent you from having a fully compliant website. Remember, this site itself is managed with Etomite and we are currently validated to XHTML 1.0 Strict standard.

Pros

Having used this software for over three years now, I’ve come to know it very well. When Asked why I use this rather than Drupal or some of the others, this is my answer:

1. Etomite works out of the box as a good, straightforward CMS. Most of my customers just want to manage their content, not run the world’s largest portal. Portal sites are great, but in my experience vastly outnumbered by normal websites.
2. Etomite is straightforward, but expandable. Let me draw a parallel that most of my readers will understand: Etomite is akin to Firefox. It does one job very well, and if you want it to do more, there are “snippets” available - like Firefox’s extensions.
3. Not being a programmer, I found Etomite to be much times simpler to use than Drupal, Joomla, etc. Even with Etomite’s lacking documentation, the concept of it is so clean and straightforward. I’d like to think that I’m smarter than the average guy (don’t laugh) and I found Drupal and Joomla’s learning curves to be downright onerous in comparison- and so did the unfortunate clients I had set up with sites based on those platforms.
4. WYSIWYG Editing. Etomite ships with RTE, TinyMCE, and Xinha. I have used all three and have landed on the perfect setup. With Xinha, I can pass Etomite sites off to old ladies who have no trouble managing the whole site, including file and image uploading, page and section management.
5. Search Engine Friendly. Etomite does friendly url’s well, it has fields that you can automatically include into the meta description, and in various other spots in the template. Each page has a title, long title, description, and document alias, all which allow you to embed page-specific info in a smart, thought-out way for good search engine optimization (SEO).
6. Etomite is really infinitely flexible. Designing for Etomite is simple, and can be done with no knowledge of php. The Snippet library is extensive, and all snippets are easily modified or written by a php programmer
7. Speed: you can apply any design to Etomite in a matter of minutes. Templates are just normal XHTML/CSS, just paste “[*content*]” into the proper spot and you’ve got a content area. Page rendering is fast too, and Etomite uses document caching to minimize hits to the database
8. Etomite makes it easy to have a good clean validating xhtml/css website. If you can make the valid template, you’re there.
9. Now that I am fully familiar with Etomite, I have confidence that I can do anything that a client asks for.
10. Etomite’s support rivals paid support- it’s that good. There is a paid option to get priority support.
11. If you need something custom to expand the functionality of Etomite, developers are always on hand for hire. I regularly enter the Etomite forums in need of something custom, and walk away with someone who can do the job.

Cons

No software is without it’s downsides, however. Even though Etomite meets my criteria of “good software,” I’d like to see these issues addressed:

• Include a better WYSIWYG editor. Even though the WYSIWYG editors shipping with Etomite are separate pieces of software with their own development team, Etomite could benefit from a better editor. As I mentioned above, Xinha is the best option I have found, but the version that is included in the Etomite install is not the newest version, and doesn’t produce valid XHTML code. While the latest version of Xinha may not be perfect, upgrading this would be a huge step in the right direction.

  A good, XHTML-compliant WYSIWYG editor is becoming the fabled holy grail of modern content management. It’s elusive. Many are coming close, and one stands out above the rest.

• Updated Management Interface. The manager is dated and clunky, and it uses frames. While that isn’t important as the frontend of a website, It could be so much nicer with a sleek new AJAX user interface.
• Version 1? I can’t believe they haven’t called the current version (.0614) version 1.0. Seriously, they should. It’s perfectly stable, secure, bugs are increasingly rare. I think Etomite suffers in the popularity department because of the version number. I’m sure that many careful developers stay away from any CMS that seems immature or “not quite ready.”
• More Developers. Etomite’s community is active, but small when you compare it to the mega-communities of the other popular CMS’s out there. Applying more minds to it would speed up improvements.
• Development Roadmap. I’ve heard this from others too: What Etomite lacks is a clear development roadmap. The next major version is in the planning stages, but it’s unclear as to what and when anything will happen. As I say in the previous point, more developers would be helpful here.

Bottom line:

I regularly receive praise and thanks from my clients for setting them up with Etomite, many of them not technically savvy or inclined. It has allowed me to comfortable turn sites over to their control- and that’s what they want - control. They want to be able to manage their website without calling someone like me, and I can’t blame them.

Etomite Website: www.etomite.org

Just a Sidebar: You’ll notice that the logo I’m posting here doesn’t match the one on Etomite’s website. That’s because it’s a new one that will be launched along with a whole new look with the next version of Etomite. I have special permission to use it here.

Technorati Tags: cms, content_management_system, drupal, etomite, joomla, mambo, xhtml, wysiwyg, web_editing, web_development

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.