By juliuskleine on

Hi,

People in my office are having a discussion about using either a content based CMS or a page based CMS. What is the difference? And in what category does Drupal belong?

Thanks

Comments

dman’s picture

dman commented

I haven't heard either of those actual terms before, so if your office mates didn't just make it up for a joke, you'd be best to start by Googling for it...
I'm guessing that I'd call Drupal more content-centric, as many of the more interesting parts of Drupal are not just pages, but aggregations of data (views) or utilities

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

i-sibbot’s picture

i-sibbot commented

I havent heard this termonology used in the company I work in, but at a guess. page based CMS sound like they're refering to the ability of a logged in user to edit the content of the site pages, inline. Sort of like Drupal offers with it's "View" and "Edit" tabs at the top of a page your editing. Bt dont quote me on that.

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

You could ask them for examples of each.

Drupalace-1’s picture

Drupalace-1 commented

I gotta agree with the others: "content based CMS or a page based CMS" doesn't appear to make sense. Perhaps your office mates are referring to "CMS-based site" vs "page-based site". (The words "dynamic" vs "static", respectively, might get tossed out as well.)

If that's the intended meaning: I scribble a few words on the differences here: http://www.drupalace.com/drupal-for-beginners Do some Googling, and you'll find tons more info on the differences between CMS-built sites and more conventional, non-CMS sites.

juliuskleine’s picture

juliuskleine commented

According to the guy who brought this up Drupal is a page based CMS. I'll try to explain the difference how he explained it to us. Don't laugh ;-)

A page based CMS stores pages in the database/content repository. If you want to save a video to the database you'd have to relate the video to a page and store the page in the database. If you want to display the video you'd get the page from the database and the page would grab the related video and display it.

A content based CMS would store the actual video in the database / content repository. The application logic would grab the video from the database, hand it to a template and some template engine would build the actual page by combining a template with data from the database (such as the video, articles, etc)

So, the main difference would be that in a content centered CMS, the templates take care of the display, while in a page based CMS (like Drupal and WordPress) the actual pages would be stored in the db. That is, the content and the actual display of the content would be stored together.

Does this make sense to you? I had Googled for the terms and Google didn't come up with many results so I was wondering how well known this distinction is among CMS pro's.

nevets’s picture

nevets commented

I wonder if he has any examples of a content based CMS?

I would consider Drupal a content based CMS. Other than placing files (images/videos/etc) the content is in the database. And Drupal stores content that is fetched from the database and displayed through a templating system. Consider most pages are a collection of content, including node based content, blocks, views, panels and more.

mallory99’s picture

mallory99 commented

In that case, in his private terminology, drupal would be a content based cms. The only sense in which drupal stores content as pages is if caching is switched on.

Wordpress would also be a content based cms. Really though, his definitions show he doesn't have much comprehension of drupal, wordpress or any cms I can think of.

Drupalace-1’s picture

Drupalace-1 commented

I think mallory99's comment about "private terminology" is spot-on, and as usual WordFallz sets the record straight too.

If your CMS pro says that Drupal "stores pages" in a database, that right there makes him very wrong. Drupal stores *nodes* ( = pieces of content) in a database, along with lots of other good stuff. Drupal builds pages on the fly, and it's true that those pages are often centered around a node or a list of nodes, but node <> page (it's an important distinction, IMO). Full "pages" aren't stored anywhere; they simply don't exist as entities all ready-made and saved.

Such is my understanding, anyway. I welcome a boot in the rear from the better-informed.

dman’s picture

dman commented

Technically, pages do sometimes get stored fully-formed in the cache table :-) And there is also boost.module
But that is irrelevant to the architecture discussion.
The distinction between nodes and html pages can be a confusing one if you don't know the big picture at first, but it is mostly just terminology, yeah.

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

juliuskleine’s picture

juliuskleine commented

Hi Nevets,

I was just trying to remember a content based CMS. I *think* he called Hippo content based.

And you are right about Drupal. Drupal uses a rather sophisticated templating system and it doens't store the actual display elements (HTML) in the database, does it? Perhaps the whole distinction is just vague.. or even a bit silly. But this guy has years of experience with different CMS's and has implemented many websites on different systems, so I assume he knows what he's talking about. Perhaps he's been making up words like dman suggested.

/ content based cms yields no useful results at all at Google, other than this topic (which has been indexed very quickly by the way!)

clementoke@neunetworks.com’s picture

clementoke@neunetworks.com commented

Alterian Content Manager and MySource Matrix are a couple. I'd consider the former content based, not sure if MySource would be considered content based

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Sorry, maybe no one is willing to say it, but this just seems like yet another case of someone waxing philosophic about something of which they clearly know absolutely nothing.

I've never seen reference to a distinction between 'page' based CMSs and 'content' based CMSs (the "C" in CMS = content after all). And if there were, I doubt very much if it would have anything to do with where you store video. Drupal can store it locally in the file system, locally in the db, locally in a bitcache, access it remotely from service provider, access it remotely from a CDN, etc. What does that have to do with the price of tea in china?

There are CMS based sites and static based sites. You can simulate a CMS with a paged based static site by simply providing a link to load a js editor and edit the page in the browser but that hardly turns a static site into a CMS.

I'm always amused by these types of discussions in the office... almost as much as by the stuff you can overhear in best buy these days ("Oh, this 1600gigaherz ddr3 memory is so worth it-- you'll be able to store 10 times the programs"), lol.

i-sibbot’s picture

i-sibbot commented

Here here. I wanted to say that though I'd get shot down. Sounds like Buzz word bingo

mikeytown2’s picture

mikeytown2 commented

I would consider MODx a 'page based CMS'. Drupal is a 'content based CMS'.

nvisioncurtis’s picture

nvisioncurtis commented

TypoLight is considered page based. They make the distinction of being page based over node based CMS. I can't say that I understand the difference really.

I think its more about how the data is stored and retrieved.

jaypan’s picture

jaypan
Location Victoria, BC
commented

As a guess, maybe a page based CMS is one in which there is no central system like Drupal, where everything is rendered through the system, rather the user creates pages, then adds code to the created pages to tie them in with the external CMS.

Maybe.

Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.

BIGANDYT’s picture

BIGANDYT commented

Seen lots of comments on here saying drupal is a content based system. It's a page based system.

The two types are "object based" and "page based".

The difference as mentioned is how the content ties to the presentation.

In page based systems like drupal, episerver etc content is bound and stored with the page.

In object based systems like adobe and sitecore content is completely separate to the page and stored independantly, you render content into layouts/components and assign layouts and components to objects. This means if you update it in one place it updates everywhere you don't have to go to every page it's displayed and update, useful for forms, rich media etc... for deltas you clone/duplicate items/objects. The other benefit is you can update the design very easily you don't have to create new pages and copy and paste data.
Obviously there are many other benefits hence why object based systems are rated higher by Gartner and Forester for enterprise CMS.

Andy

jaypan’s picture

jaypan
Location Victoria, BC
commented

In object based systems like adobe and sitecore content is completely separate to the page and stored independantly, you render content into layouts/components and assign layouts and components to objects. This means if you update it in one place it updates everywhere you don't have to go to every page it's displayed and update, useful for forms, rich media etc...

You just described Drupal.

Seen lots of comments on here saying drupal is a content based system. It's a page based system.

No it's not. It's a content based system.

Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.