OT: Client-based CMS

[Michael Hipp]

Kurt Wall wrote:
> On Monday 20 June 2005 19:56, Michael Hipp enlightened us thusly:
> 
>>Does anyone know of a CMS (content management system) that runs on the
>>client instead of the web host?
> 
> 
> No. It doesn't even make sense to me, meaning that I'm not
> sure how one would manage it, beyond creating the pages on
> a client and pushing it to the server.

Well, that's pretty much what I have in mind. Slightly similar to, say 
Dreamweaver or FrontPage, except it would be a "CMS" rather than a wysiwyg 
page editor.


>>Apologies if that sounds like a dumb question, but I've been looking at
>>quite a few CMSs but they all seem to run on the host. This has 2
>>distinct drawbacks:
>>
>>1) It requires that you have control over the host (or a very
>>cooperative web host provider).
> 
> ...or write-access to $HOME (which assumes a shell account) and 
> the ability to install apps into $HOME.

Yes, unfortunately that usually requires a fairly expensive hosting plan (to 
get shell access).


>>2) It eliminates any possibility of working on content offline.
> 
> Not at all. Develop offline, test, push it live. I do this all
> the time.

How do you do that in a CMS? Do you run the CMS on your desktop?

Please forgive these n00b questions, but this is my first foray into the very 
complex world of CMSes. All of them I've looked at are generally a PHP app 
that stores stuff in a database and retrieves it on demand as needed by httpd. 
The "client" that's used for content creation is only a web browser.

I'm probably missing some key concept (as I can't imagine how you would do 
"develop offline, test, push it live" in the CMSes I've looked at).

Thanks,
Michael