I think there are a few reasons to support tight integration of Forum functionality with your CMS:
Users are Users: If you're going to give your site visitors or administrators access to do something on your site (post a message, view "subscriber only content", update the site...), doesn't it make sense to be able to manage their access from the same point and seamlessly integrate the experience from a user's point of view? Obviously this is possible through integration, but at what cost / complexity? There are plenty of sites that don't integrate them well. From a visitors point of view it can be a horrible experience. Content is Content: Whether page content is being generated by an internal site producer or from users contributing to an online forum it still may require validation, rich text editing tools, expiry dates, access control... More and more sites seem to include "Make Your Comment On This Story". This is content as much as the story above it. Email is Huge: I am not sure it's healthy to define "content management" too narrowly. If we can recognise email as just another channel for contributing and viewing content to be managed along with traditional page-based content I think we increase our value not dilute it. I worked at Reef. To be fair the Forum functionality was only an additional $2k or so if you were looking at Content Management already. We didn't get to really tight integration of Forum content with regular page content, and email wasn't in the picture as a content channel, but there still seem to be strong arguments for the "Suite" approach rather than Silos of functionality. It was certainly a popular option on the sites I worked on. Maybe MediaSurface will do something nice with the technology? Nick > Message: 3 > From: Adam Gaffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [cms-list] Integrated Mailing List in CMS > Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 10:31:56 -0500 > > > > > It seems to me, though, that one of the important features of a CMS > > would be to allow users to 'subscribe' to bulletin boards via > > email and > > give users the option to send email directly to the forum/mailing-list > > as well as to receive emails of posts to such a 'board'. > > > > The functionality I am looking for is akin to that of webcrossing > > (www.webcrossing.com), or Apple's implementation thereof in their > > 'Support>Discussions' forum. > > > > Why would you want to do that through the CMS rather than through the forum > software? Use the right tool for the right job and all that. If the issue is > avoiding multiple user logins because you have personalization running, > WebCrossing supports (with some scripting) external user databases. I > suspect other forum packages support similar external user dbs. > > Now, what might make more sense is a CMS that had a forum module so that you > could manage ALL your content in a single place. Reef had that, but they > wanted something like $50,000 for it, which seemed quite excessive when you > could buy WebCrossing (which had a lot more forum functionality) for, what, > $1,000? > > Adam Gaffin > Executive Editor, Network World Fusion > [EMAIL PROTECTED] / (508) 490-6433 / http://www.nwfusion.com > "I programmed my robotic dog to bite the guy who delivers the electronic > mail." -- Kibo -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
