web development and photography
MySource Matrix
Matrix GUI, asset builders (and mums)
Jun 20th
After fun and a few frustrations sorting out designs in MySource Matrix in my last post (probably mostly caused by me not knowing what I was doing, and with limited time to sort things out), I’ve been looking at the overall user interface for editors.
The interface is possibly a tad intimidating for some (could you imagine your mum using it?), but the great thing about the system is that it’s flexible enough that you can build your own very simple content edit interfaces.
Lots of buttons and flashing lights…
The thing to remember here is that MySource Matrix is a powerful system, with all kinds of features on all kinds of screens. Tickboxes, drop-downs, options, buttons all over the place. It’s great, but it’s complex. And as we all know, making something easy to use is a real trick. Just think back (if you can) to the days of video recorders that no one knew how to use because they made actually fairly simple things seem very hard to do. It’s the kind of thing companies like Apple have spent decades trying to perfect.
Actually the developers of Matrix have done a reasonable job, and in any case much of the interface is only for system administrators (like me) setting the thing up.
But if all you want to do is make a new page with some text, images, and links in it (this must be like 95% of all web pages) you don’t need or want to know about all the fancy stuff in the backend, all the different types of assets, etc, etc. You probably don’t even want to know what an asset is. You just want a nice box you can type stuff into, press a button, and away you go. You want something like wordpress with all its web 2.0 goodness.
Asset builders and simple edit
Thankfully Matrix has two features which you can get to work together to build a simple editing interface the way you want it.
The simple edit interface is basically a way of allowing users to edit a page without all that backend admin stuff. On its own it’s a nice feature, but not much use if you actually want to make a new page. Asset builders are really the other side of the coin, because they give you the flexibility to allow any user to add in whatever new assets you want them to add.
So, make a new page with asset builder. Edit it with simple edit.
I have to say that I haven’t tried getting them to work together yet. I don’t even know to what extent that’s possible. What would be nice is to be able to make a new page and edit it at the same time, then either publish it or save it for later if I don’t want it to go live. That’s what I’m doing now in wordpress. That’s what google docs does. It’s intuitive and quick. That said, I’m probably hoping for too much, because bolting something that simple onto what can often be a considerably more complex process (think workflows, nested content, etc) is a real problem.
Summary
Matrix offers a very comprehensive and rich backend interface. If you want something easier for your users you can build your own very simple frontend new page/edit interface, which is a really nice feature. Users still have to go into the admin interface to delete or move those pages, and do other fairly simple operations.
I’d love to see a friendlier backend interface to Matrix, and I have no idea if that’s planned for Matrix 4 (due out sometime next year apparently). Sprucing it up somewhat would certainly turn it into a pretty much unrivalled open source CMS.
MySource Matrix design
Jun 18th
I’ve been playing around with mysource matrix on my laptop recently, as an early development stage to our pilot while we’re waiting for the server hardware to be set up.
One of the first things I’ve been looking at has been setting up designs, and I have to admit it’s been a somewhat mysterious process.
OK so I haven’t been on Squiz’s design training course, but I have taken a long hard look at the 94-page design manual (to their credit, Squiz have about 1300 pages of documentation, most of which is freely available.)
Part of the problem is our pretty complex set of css files. The other part of the problem seems to be the way mysource matrix deals with links to images in css files. Suffice to say that getting an existing design into mysource matrix isn’t much fun. Once you’ve got over that hurdle, performance seems to be an issue.
A far easier option is just to lift your static template, pointing to all those static css files and images sitting on your live webserver. In fact this works just great, and it’s what I’m now doing. But something makes me feel it’s not the ‘right’ way to do things. I should point out that I may have misunderstood something in how to set things up, so this review may not be entirely fair. Apologies in advance it that’s the case.
If you enjoy pain, and want to share some of mine, read on…
Getting Started
Let’s say you have an image that you want to call from a css file with something like
background-image:url(images/snap.gif)
How does matrix know where images/snap.gif lives? Unless it’s living somewhere on a publicly accessible web server, it has to be uploaded into matrix. You can then refer to it as mysource_files/snap.gif, and the system will know what you mean.
If this sounds simple enough, then wait. There’s much more. By the end of this you’ll think having teeth pulled is a fun experience. Read on…
CSS Files
You first have to tell matrix that each css file which has a url() is an asset, not just some static text file sitting there. OK, so I go through all 30 of my css files that are like this, creating them as children to my main design. Something is making me feel uneasy about this, but I carry on anyway.
Images
Right, now I have to make all the images that are referred to in each css file children of the corresponding css file. Ugh. Yep, well I don’t have anything better to do, so I reorganise all my images according to the css file they appear in. Some images in more than one place, but oh well I guess I could make them as copies if only I could remember which css file I already uploaded them to. Whatever. I battle on.
The process continues for some time…
Cool. It was painful, but now I have all my css files uploaded, with all their corresponding images. I’ve changed the css files to refer to mysource_files/imagename.gif rather than their original url.
Now I need to link these files into the main design. It turns out that I can’t actually do this directly. I have to create special design areas in the main design which point to the css files.
OK, not too bad? Erm, well it’s not that simple. I actually also need to put in what’s called a customization which acts as a bridge between design and css files, and it’s that thing which point to the css assets themselves. This feels very wrong, but I carry on.
Too slooowww…
Hoorah! Now after a few hours persistence I have a working design. I test it out. After about 8 seconds, my page loads with the correct design. Hoorah again!
Then I stop and think what’s just happened. 8 seconds? Hmmm, ok well I know this is just on my macbook, but that’s really a tad slow isn’t it?
At that point I realised that there’s a lot going on here. You can cache the css files, although that threw an error when I tried it. I eventually fixed that ‘feature’ temporarily, and it’s true things did start to speed up a lot.
But at that point I pretty much gave up. Life’s too short. The option to point all urls at the currently live designs was just too alluring. Anyway it was all a useful experience, if only to tell me that getting a design to work properly and load quickly in MySource Matrix isn’t a quick or simple procedure.
The Squiz Licence
May 17th
I’ve recently been looking more closely at MySource Matrix, an open source PHP-based CMS. It’s very important to realise that ‘open source’ is not necessarily what you might think in the real world of running an enterprise CMS.
Squiz
So what about the details of using MySource Matrix in anger? First off, the software is essentially managed by one company, Squiz, based in Australia. It was (as far as I can see) very much developed by them, and while additions and improvements may have been added by people in a user-community over the years, what you get when you download the system is essentially a Squiz product.
Dual licence
Then there’s the dual licence. This basically means that you can download the software, install it on your laptop or server or whatever (as I did) and start playing around with it. This comes under a GPL licence, and you’re free to do whatever you want with it. Squiz have even kindly released hundreds of pages of documentation on how to use the system.
But you’d have to be a brave soul to do this for anything other than your department’s website, etc. Imagine your university or large corporation wanted a CMS, and you offer them something for which you have no training, and only a superficial idea of the mechanisms behind it because you can only spend 50% of your time on it? Would you really want to be to blame for that disaster-in-waiting?
And I think this is exactly what Squiz have realised, and exactly why they have a dual licence. That is, if you want something a bit shinier, more bells and whistles, proper training, proper support… well, really you need their SSV (Squiz Supported Version) licence. This is where things seem to change somewhat.
The SSV bit
Once you enter SSV territory, you seem to agree that in essence everything you have is owned by Squiz. Moreover, you must tell Squiz about any changes you make to the code, and those changes aren’t yours. They belong to Squiz. This may scare some, and horrify true blue open source devotees. I should point out that it appears that, according to this page, that you can actually opt to limit your obligation to Squiz (for a fee). You can even opt to resell your own changes commercially, although I’d imagine this option demands an even bigger fee.
In any case, I wonder, is it really so terrible not to be able to modify the code, and still retain ownership of those changes? Would you really want to make any changes to a complex and well-supported system? About a year ago I had to tinker with phpBB to make it work in the way we wanted. Great. But now we have a system which would be hard to update if there were any new security patches. I also remember going to a Plone talk once, at which some developers proudly demonstrated how brilliant Plone could be. The only caveat was that it had taken them years of expert development to get to that point, and their version of Plone was so wildly different from the out-the-box version that updates were a significant problem.
It’s free
As far as I’m concerned, Squiz’s dual licence is sort of open source. It isn’t true open source, but really I don’t care. The main thing is that it’s much much cheaper to get hold of than other CMS vendors (ie no up front licence fee of £80k), and you can see all the code and work out what’s going on.
OK, changing that code and retaining ownership of the changes is another thing, but maybe you really need to be looking at your motives for getting a CMS. If it’s to get: a system which works, which users like, is easy to maintain, has good support, and doesn’t cost too much… well then something like this Squiz’s licence and MySource Matrix might seem like a good idea.
But if you want to spend the next few years tinkering and playing and developing your own modules, and at the end of this process you want to claim the changes as your own… well, maybe this licence scheme isn’t for you.
Summary
Squiz have developed what looks like a good CMS. They provide the software for free, but make their money out of support, design, and training. They also develop a number of extra modules, which they sell to non-educational and non-governmental clients.
But just because the software is free, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s truly open source. Their SSV licence (essential if you want to use the system to its full potential and do serious stuff with it) means Squiz end up owning any changes you might make. I’m no lawyer, but it even seems like any modules you might develop end up being theirs too.
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, at least if you feel it’s unlikely that you’d do a massive amount of development yourself. And it’s important to know that any changes you do make end up being incorporated into the product, so other Matrix users benefit. I also get the impression that many new bits of code are developed by users with collaboration from Squiz. So overall it seems like a collaborative situation where everyone gains from the development of a new requirement: Squiz make more money, and users end up with a better CMS. Is this bad? I don’t think so.
MySource Matrix and Squiz
May 7th
I’ve been looking recently at an open source enterprise CMS called MySource Matrix. It’s written in PHP5, and unusually for open source CMS actually seems to be able to cope well at enterprise level.
It’s built from the ground up on an asset basis. Everything is an asset: users, content, permissions, workflow. The whole lot. This allows for a great deal of flexibility and power.
Who?
It is not particularly well-known, at least outside Australia – where the core development has taken place. No one I’ve mentioned it to has heard of it before. It has been adopted by a few organizations (mainly local government and universities) in the UK. In Australia is has a wide user-base, having been originally adopted by the Australian government a few years ago.
This means that there is a good amount of independent support and development from a growing community of users. Being open source anyone can look at the code, make their own improvements, etc. However it’s a complicated system, so any tinkering on a full-on live system would be pretty scary.
Squized
That’s where Squiz come in. Basically this Australian-based company developed the system with grants from the government a few years ago, and released it as open source. It’s been evolving under their guidance ever since, and they’ve added in about a dozen (not open source) plugins. The plugins is one of the ways they make their money.
The other is to provide support for the system. Even though it’s open source, few people would be brave enough to take it on and tame it. Apparently they are beginning to encourage other companies to offer some support services, such as website design. But they are understandably pretty protective about being the sole company to offer full support.
It costs a bit
This is where one might reasonably have some concerns about MySource Matrix. It may be free, but the support and setup isn’t. And because no one else (apart from the wider user community) can offer support, you are in some senses just as locked in to this CMS as a traditional licensed CMS. Of course, the difference is that you might be locked in, but at least you haven’t spent £50k or more on a license. Money that would just rub salt in the wound should things start to go wrong.
Not that other open source CMS leave you any less locked in. For example Plone, a hugely popular CMS, is notoriously nightmarish to configure to your needs. Companies offer assistance, and once again you can end up tied into their particular solution or version of the core.
Not all open
Not everything in MySource Matrix is free. The extra modules (which are pretty crucial) are provided by Squiz under an SSV licence. Anything you do with them is their property. Does this matter? Well, I don’t think so. How often would you really want to tinker with the source code of someone else’s plugins. I guess it just encourages you to make your suggestions to them, and let them do the hard work. Of course, you have to pay for this. But you’d probably not want the development hassle anyway.
Summary
As a summary, I’d say the MySource Matrix/Squiz ticket looks promising. It has some obvious concerns, but they don’t seem to be concerns that are unique or particular to this CMS.
