Chapter 15. Real Content

Here we are at the last chapter, and our CMS framework still has no content! The reason for this state of affairs is that the provision of a CMS has a lot of common features, but most of them operate at a basic level below the provision of specific services. This is illustrated by looking at a popular, off the shelf CMS and observing that of all the available extensions, the largest single category is simply described as "content management". So, however much the standard package provides, it seems that there is still enormous scope for additions.

In this chapter, I aim to describe a number of specific application areas, discussing the particular issues that arise with implementations. Looking at our framework solution, I will concentrate on one sample extension. It is a very simple text handling mechanism that can be explained in detail. Also, the ways in which the simple text system could be extended will be described.

The problem

There are some common features in...