Build a CMS -- Project dScribe

Today is a big event for me. I decide to launch a new initiative on my blog.
I hope it will work as planned ;-)

OK, here we go.

For my project Scoilnet, using my personal experience on CMS(Content Management System just in case you still don't know;-)), I was confronted with many options.

Because I still don't believe (don't flame me ;-)) in the big CMS tools for medium websites, I decided after a long brainstorming session (with myself, easier to make decisions) to jump in the DIY CMS on my own.

Don't misunderstand the project. I am not going to compete with Vignette or other big cheeses  !

Well it's not really a premiere for me, but in .Net, surely yes.

I studied and read a lot of books, websites, of course and analyzed all the aspects of the project.

Because so many marvelous things around us were created by some talented folks, I decided to follow their footsteps, and to develop my solution based on the excellent book Building a Content Management System written by Stephen R.G. Fraser.

As I said already this is an excellent reading. Because I am also more comfortable with VB, I had to rewrite a lot of things from C#.

I say rewrite because I am not interested by just 'copy and paste', I really want to do my own stuff.

So this CMS is loosely based on the book content.

The other different thing is that I like the concept of N-tier architecture, and for that I included in my project the Data Access Application Block from Microsoft.

I will have the presentation layer and the business rules separated from the data layer

Using this, it's surely more job, but much more readable code at the end of the day.

So now, this is working smoothly, and I am now at the moment where everything start to be clear in my mind about what I can achieve with the tool.

Rather than just publishing a big zip file with all the codes, I want to innovate and I am going to publish dScribe (Ok OK not great name but I like to name things) brick by brick.

I'm going to start talking about the Workflow, followed by the Content creation, and so on.

I have no clue about the number of stories I will have at the end, but it's surely an exciting project (for me! And I hope for you too).

Of course, feel free to comment and if you have some ideas or resources to improve dScribe, let me know.

So the first part in a couple of hours, about building a nice expandable menu for the Workflow part.