Web Content Management module availability

[agn67]

Hi,
As far as i know, Alfresco is only a document content management so far.
How soon are you going te get available a web content management ? I'm in the process to decide the architecture for an e-goverment portal/CMS in a ASP modality and I'm also interesting in the base platform Alfresco software platform is based in (we are java evangelists ….). But I'm also looking at other products like Plone, Joomla, Drupal and this question is very important to get the right decision.

Thanks in advance.

[kevinr]

We have recently aquired the vice president of engineering and several key developers from a well known Web Content Management company called Interwoven. These guys will now be focused solely on developing a new breed of WCM application on the Alfresco repository platform!

We expect the first preview of this software to be available in the summer this year.

Thanks for your interest,

Kevin

[kvc]

Kevin Cochrane here, and as Kevin Roast noted, we are actively working on our web content roadmap now.

Here's the current thinking.  This information will be posted to our wiki shortly.  Questions / comments / requests of course highly desired:

Target:
-  Preview release mid-summer
-  1.0 release by end of year

Ten areas of functional enhancements we are actively investigating:

1.  Change set staging and in-context preview
     Ability to add, edit, or delete multiple files and folders
     in sandboxed workspace and test those changes in a
     virtualized view of the entire website.  Ability to integrate
     approved change sets into the main website and deploy
     for public consumption.
 
2.  XML data capture and transformation
     Ability to access browser-based forms with configurable
     business logic to capture structured content and store
     as any arbitrary XML document.  Ability to apply rules
     against capture XML to transform into any number of
     output format (multiple HTML page renditions, other XML
     formats, or PDF).

3.  Document publishing and transformation
     Ability to publish documents from a collaboration space
     and promote PDF and HTML renditions to an internal or
     public-facing website.  Ability to resync renditions upon
     document modification.

4.  Configurable editorial review processes
     Ability to route web content through a configurable
     serial or read-only concurrent review process.  Ability
     to route content for review and approval via HTML-formatted
     email messages (for reviewers unfamiliar with the Alfresco
     web client).

5.  Configurable metadata capture
     Ability to capture arbitrary metadata on all published
     assets for purposes of run-time navigation, timed launch
     and expiration, search, entitlement, and personalization.

6.  Page components and component-based page assembly
     Ability to create reusable web building blocks and repurpose
     across multiple pages and multiple sites (breadcrumbs,
     category browsers, navbars, indexes, teasers, etc.).  Ability
     for web publishers to modify run-time behavior of components
     on a dynamic web page (which product to promote in a teaser,
     # of press releases highlighted in a list component, etc.).

7.  Site templating
     Ability to templatize a website, including default directory
     structure, page templates, content forms, editorial review
     processes, deployment rules, and more.  Ability for web
     content managers to create new websites based on existing
     site templating to quickly clone and publish a new website
     with minimal development and configuration.

8.  Site snapshoting and rollback
     Site-level archival for purposes of rollback and recovery.

9.  Integrated deployment module
     Ability to deploy approved sites, pages, and content to
     one or multiple front-end webservers.  Includes support
     for timed launch and expiration and ability to deploy both
     static, generated HTML or XML to a run-time JCR for
     dynamic content delivery.

10. Integrated run-time content delivery framework
      Ability to host a run-time JCR outside the firewall with
      run-time generation of web pages.


In addition to the above, we are also looking to build a sample
OOTB website (an information-orient internet website) that can
be used OOTB or as a reference for people's own development
efforts.   This reference site will be packaged so that others can
easily contribute additional templates and components so that
other types of reference sites can be readily shared from Alfresco
implementation to Alfresco implementation.

As noted, this is our preliminary targets that are under consideration
right now.   Our wiki will be updated in the next coming week to reflect
this information.

Cheers.

Kevin C.

[mattruby]

This is fantastic news!  I can't wait to see all the details in the wiki.

[twinsen]

Hello

I have worked a lot on Interwoven based project for various customer.

In my opinion, it's still one of the best WCM product today, even if it's becoming more and more phased out.

I see you are taking some good idea from Interwoven and i hope you will succeed in this challenge. Therefore, i hope you will not take the bad one

Regards
Twinsen

[chane]

Kevin Cochrane here, and as Kevin Roast noted, we are actively working on our web content roadmap now.

Here's the current thinking.  This information will be posted to our wiki shortly.  Questions / comments / requests of course highly desired:

Target:
-  Preview release mid-summer
-  1.0 release by end of year

Ten areas of functional enhancements we are actively investigating:

<snip />

Cheers.

Kevin C.

Has any thought been given as to which product (community vs enterprise) version this functionality will be present in?

Chris….

[kvc]

Hello

I have worked a lot on Interwoven based project for various customer.

In my opinion, it's still one of the best WCM product today, even if it's becoming more and more phased out.

I see you are taking some good idea from Interwoven and i hope you will succeed in this challenge. Therefore, i hope you will not take the bad one

Regards
Twinsen

Kevin Cochrane here, VP Engineering at Alfresco.  I was the original guy behind TeamSite (employee #4) and just left Interwoven few months back - unhappy with the long-term direction of TeamSite.  And yes, I hope to keep the good and improve in areas where improvements where needed.  Stay tuned to our wiki, and if you'd like to discuss this in greater detail, please feel free to email me at kevinc@alfresco.com

[fselendic]

Just few questions about WCM. Will it be a separate product (I saw someone mentioning version 1.0), or integrated into Alfresco? Also, what kind of licensing model do you plan for WCM? Same as Alfresco? With free community edition, Professional, Enterprise etc?

[kvc]

Just few questions about WCM. Will it be a separate product (I saw someone mentioning version 1.0), or integrated into Alfresco? Also, what kind of licensing model do you plan for WCM? Same as Alfresco? With free community edition, Professional, Enterprise etc?

WCM will be a module that will install atop the Alfresco platform.  As a separate package it will have its own version # and release schedule.  The entire WCM module will be open source and available in the community edition.

[fselendic]

Just few questions about WCM. Will it be a separate product (I saw someone mentioning version 1.0), or integrated into Alfresco? Also, what kind of licensing model do you plan for WCM? Same as Alfresco? With free community edition, Professional, Enterprise etc?

WCM will be a module that will install atop the Alfresco platform.  As a separate package it will have its own version # and release schedule.  The entire WCM module will be open source and available in the community edition.

Thanks a lot. Thats really great news. Looking forward to summer preview release.