OT: Client-based CMS

[Kurt Wall]

On Tuesday 21 June 2005 01:00, Michael Hipp enlightened us thusly:
> 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.

That's not a CMS, then, or at least not what I would call a 
CMS.

> > ...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).

It depends on the provider, but I see your point.

> >>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?

No. The CMS runs on the server. It simply has the ability to accept
a file uploaded via some sort of Web form.

> 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.

That's precisely the idea: put the complicated stuff on the server and
let client apps just have a front-end accessed via HTTP. All the logic
for "management" lives on the server.

> 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).

Kurt