Is it time for a new CMS platform?

[Martinv678]

I have had an idea recently to build a new content management system that would be built purely in Javascript (Node, Angular, MongoDB). It would enable users to not have to know much about coding, would make building websites 10x easier and require little coding experience. High quality templates would be available and it would be more user friendly out of the box than WP as I have found clients can find WP a little difficult at first.

Obviously this would be a huge task and would require many man hours, also with WP being the biggest competition it would be hard to compete from the start.

Do you believe this has legs? I think there is scope for people who are looking to get of the ground but do not want the pain of having to learn coding. It would be great to know peoples thoughts as it always hard not to get carried away with the wrong idea and spend hours on something that is doomed from the start.

Thanks!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PopEmersen]

Do you believe this has legs?
Thanks!

You won't know until you create a prototype and put it in the market.....do it.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Do you believe this has legs?

You won't know until you create a prototype and put it in the market.....do it.

If you have an awesome product, you shouldn't be worried about the competition, the competition should be worried about you.

also with WP being the biggest competition it would be hard to compete from the start.

Is it ever easy? Adoption is always difficult, but if the product is clearly differentiated, the product will ultimately sell itself.

 

[AllenCrawley]

I have had an idea recently to build a new content management system that would be built purely in Javascript (Node, Angular, MongoDB). It would enable users to not have to know much about coding, would make building websites 10x easier and require little coding experience. High quality templates would be available and it would be more user friendly out of the box than WP as I have found clients can find WP a little difficult at first.

I like the idea of it and think there may be a place for it in the market.

Something also to consider, for you or anyone who may read this thread...

Wordpress was originally a blogging platform but has evolved into a powerful CMS. Blogging is now almost an afterthought.

Ghost, started by a former wordpress employee, saw a gap in the market a need for a dedicated blogging platform that was elegantly designed.

Sometimes you can look at a large company, pick out just one segment of it and build a highly successful business.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[harerace]

I have had an idea recently to build a new content management system that would be built purely in Javascript (Node, Angular, MongoDB). It would enable users to not have to know much about coding, would make building websites 10x easier and require little coding experience. High quality templates would be available and it would be more user friendly out of the box than WP as I have found clients can find WP a little difficult at first.

Obviously this would be a huge task and would require many man hours, also with WP being the biggest competition it would be hard to compete from the start.

Do you believe this has legs? I think there is scope for people who are looking to get of the ground but do not want the pain of having to learn coding. It would be great to know peoples thoughts as it always hard not to get carried away with the wrong idea and spend hours on something that is doomed from the start.

Thanks!

WP is driven by people who have a common goal and believe in the same thing. Hard to compete with them from the start? lol to compete with them is foolish and a complete waste of time and energy.

 

[JasonR]

I agree with what MJ/Allen said.

Here's an idea for you, and what I need in my business.

I need a self-hosted e-commerce platform, that is pretty good out-of-the box. There is Magento (which was bought out by eBay for $100+), but it's a little too powerful and resource-hungry for my needs.

If you created something that was open-source, but not as resource intensive as Magento I would sign up YESTERDAY. Now, this is a HUGE task, because e-commerce software is very complex. But it's an idea for you.

I will probably end up using Magento because it's looking like my only option at this point unless I want to go full custom. I'm using a fully custom e-commerce platform right now, and it sucks.

Due to my requirements, I can't use hosted platforms like Shopify, Big Commerce, etc.

 

[harerace]

I agree with what MJ/Allen said.

Here's an idea for you, and what I need in my business.

I need a self-hosted e-commerce platform, that is pretty good out-of-the box. There is Magento (which was bought out by eBay for $100+), but it's a little too powerful and resource-hungry for my needs.

If you created something that was open-source, but not as resource intensive as Magento I would sign up YESTERDAY. Now, this is a HUGE task, because e-commerce software is very complex. But it's an idea for you.

I will probably end up using Magento because it's looking like my only option at this point unless I want to go full custom. I'm using a fully custom e-commerce platform right now, and it sucks.

Due to my requirements, I can't use hosted platforms like Shopify, Big Commerce, etc.

WordPress + Woo-commerce

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[dknise]

I have had an idea recently to build a new content management system that would be built purely in Javascript (Node, Angular, MongoDB).

What's the reason for choosing Node over Apache? My understanding is that Node is single threaded which makes scalability a factor. Another thing to consider is future support. Seeing as how new Node is... it's a little scary! Using LAMP definitely has some down sides, but it's super easy to get up and running and you KNOW it will continue to be supported. The reason I refuse to learn any Microsoft technologies is I have 6 MS certifications that are now useless. COM, .NET, WPF/Silverlight, etc. All were great technologies that became deprecated during their prime.

And like MJ said, solid execution will always win out. So I say go for it! You sound like you can do it.

 

[Deleted20245]

If you could do what Drupal does, but not open source, you're my god. I like open source in theory, but man. Drupal is tough to find minor workarounds for stuff. I love the ease of something like concrete5, but it's not scalable, and the data isn't as flexible as Drupal.

 

[TOS]

Martin: I want this, and have actually been looking for it. I dont have time/patience to be a good programmer, but want the advantages with AngularJS. And with the mean stack i think you can build something the same user can be alot more creative with (just my thought).

Hope you go for it, i would follow this closely and if I can contribute with something Im inn (very intrested in this plattform).

I actually have programmed the todo app in my own mean enviroment created from scratch, so not that good .

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[joanna]

You already got some good advise from others. As mentioned above there is Ghost that's been created on the technology stack you're looking at, though it's limited itself to just blogging. I would echo one of the previous questions - why NodeJS? Not saying you should or shouldn't go for it, but you should know why you're choosing it, especially if it's meant to be a business decision rather than - this is cool and I want to learn it / write in it.

Is there a need for Yet Another CMS? Yes and no. If you're going to just be that, then you will face an uphill battle. As it has been mentioned before, you probably stand a better chance in the market if your CMS is focused on some specific audience, preferably with a currently unsatisfied need. Also depends what your goal is - have a niche business, have a large business, WP style world domination?

Being simpler then Wordpress is a nice goal, but it would likely come at the cost of complexity. Also if that is your aim I wouldn't skimp on someone to deal with not just design but UX side of things. Also if simplicity is what you want to handle and consider WP to be hard to learn for your clients, not sure WP would be your direct competitor. There are quite a few WYSIWYG website builders out there, I don't follow that side of the market so can't give you names of the top of my head. This is not to say you couldn't carve a slice for yourself.

 

[Martinv678]

Thank you everybody for your feedback I appreciate all the comments. I'm definitely going for it and have already started the building process. As JasonR said I would really be looking to fill the market for e-commerce or a niche that I find Wordpress doesn't fill. I find e-commerce sites to be difficult to start and create in Wordpress and to really use Wordpress you still have to know a bit of programming. I want an out of the box system that people can apply and be easy to use without the need for programming history.

The only small issue I have is that I have HTML/CSS/JS experience but would have to learn extensive backend coding to do this. I think PHP as a language is dying and would like to stay away from that as much as possible. It would be cool if the front end was built using a framework like Backbone and Angular to create quick routes and views and the database was just queried for the content.

The only reason I chose Node in the first place was because I am fluent in JS and MongoDB and for me would easier to code but after doing some testing I don't think it would be sustainable and think this is why other Node CMS's haven't been achieving so well.

Joanna you are absolutely right. For me to run head on at the CMS market would be useless. The aim with this would be to hit two niches; e-commerce and the kinda build your own website with no prior knowledge market. The vision in my head is bigger than that stated above but all would be do-able but its just the time needed. Also as you said UX would be a major factor and I this is something I would need to outsource as it's not a forte of mine.

If anyone would be interested in joining me in this venture, I would happily welcome people in as I would need help with the backend and UX (also changing the world).

 

[TOS]

Martin, have you looked at the mean stack. Im not talking from much own experience, but I have read very good things about using this combination.


It’s basically, AngularJS, Node, Mongo and Express for the backend, and I’m really impressed with how easy express is. Here is a really good tutorial on express .


Now I am actually designing an app where we will use this framework to complete it. As it’s an single page application and we need to present the prototype to soon, I believe this framework will really help us. Maybe we should have chat, feel free to contact me

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Martinv678]

TOS, Thank you for the reply!

Yea, I have heard and used the mean stack before and have found it simple to use. The only issue I have with this is security and would need to seriously look into this.

The only issue I have with the MEAN stack is the use of Jade templates and although you can use other templating systems I just think it would not be best way of going round creating pages. Thank you for the offer to contact you and will be in the near future, also feel free to contact me back if you would like to chat about your existing projects.

Today I decided on the market i'm aiming for and have decided that this will not be so much a CMS but a tool for creating a website easily and quickly, what ever the size of the website while remaining professional looking. Instead of design templates you will easily be able to add modules to existing layouts. A CMS will be provided with this. This means I wouldn't be directly against WP.

 

[Milkanic]

Have you looked at Mezzanine? It's Python/Django so you have all the nice MVC architecture, django templates, caching, etc.
It also has an eCommerce plugin called Cartridge.

I'm using for a few sites and love it. It requires you know the python/django ecosystem as this point but that could be abstracted out to make it more end user friendly.

http://mezzanine.jupo.org/

 

[Martinv678]

I agree with what MJ/Allen said.

Here's an idea for you, and what I need in my business.

I need a self-hosted e-commerce platform, that is pretty good out-of-the box. There is Magento (which was bought out by eBay for $100+), but it's a little too powerful and resource-hungry for my needs.

If you created something that was open-source, but not as resource intensive as Magento I would sign up YESTERDAY. Now, this is a HUGE task, because e-commerce software is very complex. But it's an idea for you.

I will probably end up using Magento because it's looking like my only option at this point unless I want to go full custom. I'm using a fully custom e-commerce platform right now, and it sucks.

Due to my requirements, I can't use hosted platforms like Shopify, Big Commerce, etc.

I have taken this in aboard and have an update. The idea was a bit rocky at the start, mainly deciding the best way to go about it rather than diving in head first but i've met a backend developer who knows PHP and will be able to help me with the back end stuff rather than me focusing on both.

Ultimately the site will start as a out of the e-commerce platform, like magneto but so simple your nan could build a shop. People will be able to add modules to the pages rather plugins and will easy to use for the users. I find you have about 3 steps before you even get a plugin working properly on Wordpress. All the layout and the designs are created by the user and the admin interface will be easy to use so user will not have to have any coding experience.

Thanks for all the messages here! After reading the MFL again, my first comment seems a little wantrapruner (complaining about competition and such) but it's all going well.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[jon4888]

I love that idea. I think it is desperately needed. I have been using wordpress for a number of years, and a large market is moving towards angular and the mean stack. However, we can't easily use this in client projects for smaller businesses, because the average user wouldn't be able to update their sites themselves. Which means you would have to keep returning to change small things here and there, which wouldn't be cost effective. We need a CMS that's as easy if not easier than wordpress and that's definitely much easier for developers. Current CMSs for angular are incomplete, costly, poorly designed, not user friendly etc...

I would love to talk to you about this project, for the past week I have been pretending to build one. I'm using inline-editing with CKEdit, an intuitive interface for users, and a flexible and easy to use api for developers.

However, I'm a fairly new angular user, and some of the finer points, I don't have much knowledge, such as security, managing users, protecting certain content. If you are good at any of these points I would love to see about teaming up and maybe building an open source CMS so developers can start switching to angular and the mean stack.

 

[johk]

Is it possible to keep the existing CMS (it being Joomla, WP etc) and the create an interface connecting to angular.js?

As others have mentioned - Building a CMS is big task

 

[jon4888]

That's definitely worth checking thoroughly first. I have done a decent bit of searching for wordpress only, and though it's somewhat possible in wordpress, it's not friendly, or capable. The core is written in PHP. I think besides that we've lived with wordpress long enough to learn from it's successes and failures that a new CMS that uses those lessons might be just what we need. I've heard a lot of developers complaining that wordpress is too bulky and that's why the flat-file cms has come out. However, the problem with the flat-file cms is that they are not open sourced, and because they are not, people will not develop plugins for them. And without that community to support it, they fail.

If we just add angular on top of wordpress, instead of slimming it down, it runs the risk of being even bulkier.

A new CMS however needs to be well documented, easy to learn and use for developers, common sense updating for clients, open source, and offers a lot of easy extensibility and customizability.

But perhaps, we could mix angular into wordpress without it becoming bulkier. I'm all about saving energy and time. And 60% of sites are built in wordpress. Does anyone know more about this?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[splok]

I've heard a lot of developers complaining that wordpress is too bulky and that's why the flat-file cms has come out. However, the problem with the flat-file cms is that they are not open sourced, and because they are not, people will not develop plugins for them.

Pico is flat and open source. Haven't tried it yet, but considering launching my next site with it. No idea how plugin-friendly it is, but if you want a light cms, having lots of plugins seems a bit at odds with that goal.

 

[rcdlopez]

I'm a PHP developer. I say, start the project on github. See where it goes from there

 

[Martinv678]

So i've taken some time to research this, I think my last post was in December?! It is definitely possible and from information that I have received there is a market, especially in a niche sector. What I envisioned... I have time to do a lot of the coding, but not all, I would need developers and testers to come on board. I'm going to start this project on git and work from there, start getting people on board to help and deciding exactly from the get go what it would need to achieve. If anyone would interested in joining in on the project or know of any developer who would be interested then send me a PM or a message on here and i'll look to start a skype group or facebook where people can post suggestions and ideas.

As a note i've already created my own mean stack with alot less code and just as secure. I want to use this going forward as the basis of the CMS going forward. I did learn PHP in my time off as a kick to my self to stop being lazy and looked into the benefits but I still would prefer to use Node (mean stack).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Kyle Tully]

I have had an idea recently to build a new content management system that would be built purely in Javascript (Node, Angular, MongoDB). It would enable users to not have to know much about coding, would make building websites 10x easier and require little coding experience. High quality templates would be available and it would be more user friendly out of the box than WP as I have found clients can find WP a little difficult at first.

Obviously this would be a huge task and would require many man hours, also with WP being the biggest competition it would be hard to compete from the start.

Do you believe this has legs? I think there is scope for people who are looking to get of the ground but do not want the pain of having to learn coding. It would be great to know peoples thoughts as it always hard not to get carried away with the wrong idea and spend hours on something that is doomed from the start.

Thanks!

What's your business model? Who is your target market?

Playing devil's advocate... what makes this unique? There are plenty of options out there for people who can't code and want high quality templates etc.

Wordpress is free, getting easier to use, has functionality for pretty much anything you want to do, and is gaining market share.

Lots of people will jump up and say "yes I want something new and easy!" but what that means to each individual is unique.

Some interesting numbers:

http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all

http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management

 

[Martinv678]

I'm not too interested in numbers....and am currently doing the research for the best direction.

There are plenty of options but they mostly suck!

Microsoft had quite a lot of market share when Steve Jobs returned to Apple so the market share is kinda irrelevant to me at the moment. As mentioned above it will speak for itself if its that good and even if it does fail at least i've tried and can learn next time?

I'm kinda looking to hit the market of people who don't really want to hire a developer but want the functionality of a professional website. Whether large or small business. Wordpress I wouldn't say doesn't really provide this.

 

[Kyle Tully]

There are plenty of options but they mostly suck!

Define "suck". The problem is everyone defines it differently.

As mentioned above it will speak for itself if its that good

"If you build it they will come" is not a good business plan

I'm kinda looking to hit the market of people who don't really want to hire a developer but want the functionality of a professional website. Whether large or small business. Wordpress I wouldn't say doesn't really provide this.

You need to get a lot clearer on exactly who the target market is and the problem you're solving. There are plenty of options for what you're proposing here... depending on what you need off the top of my head there is Wix, Shopify, Bigcommerce, LightCMS, Unbounce, Business Catalyst etc.

Not trying to deter you just pointing out the idea needs refinement.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Martinv678]

There are plenty of options but they mostly suck!

Just from a UX stand point, a lot of sites actually have this issue.

Regarding the rest of your statement. I'm not actually going to go with a "business plan" as such instead put together a smaller document of where I would like the CMS to fit within the market, how it will function and what I want it to achieve on a prototype level. I have stated before I am currently researching and would like to make sure that the need is there else there is no point; so everything is slightly hazy and would be unrefined at the moment.

The thread was started to see if the idea was valid and if businesses owners on this site would use something like this while also trying to distinguish where they may have found issues. Rather than i've got an idea and now i'm just going to build it straight away without any pre-planning. I was pointing out before how I was going to initialise it e.g through Git once I know exactly who I'm making it for, otherwise i'm just asking people to make something without having a true understanding.

I just have a vision that the internet should be easier for people to use when creating a website. All the tools so far are good but sometimes with WP plugins when you install them they can become hard to work out or confusing for someone who is new to it all. I have built websites for people for years and the underlying problem I get from people is that 'it is all abit confusing' even if you remove buttons they never will use. Also, people also don't have time for messing around with their site and just need things done quickly and this is something I would like to solve.

There are many more areas including e-commerce that should be made more simple and less expensive for the user.

Thank you for your comments its great to get some feed back.