C3XULadmin CMS - Content Management System

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by Peter 'deb00t' Nemšák on May 4, 2009 · permalink

I have tested a few so-called XUL-based CMS interfaces, but this one beats them badly. It is using probably everything that's available in XUL, well, maybe except RDF (which is not a bad thing, as this uses clean XML SOAP communication) and canvas (I believe they will come up with something using it in the future anyway) - custom treeviews with icons, multiwindow interfaces with tabs, sidebars, drag'n'drop, editor, localization, spelling, ...

The functionality itself is just fine, there's galleries with multiple image formats (I thought I would have to create every single format myself, but nope - does that automatically from the original, sweet), video gallery, e-commerce for products, and of course, articles and files. There's also an administration tab for creating or editing users (with groups and permissions!!!) or the whole site map.

Of course, you need a working backend for this to work, but the Cyclone3 backend looks pretty robust and dynamic. And is open-sourced, too. I haven't installed the framework myself, as this is a bit beyond my linux skills (though there's a walkthrough for that on the framework page), but there are ways to try the CMS interface, so you can decide if you want to try to install the backend and also try that. They also seem to have a pre-installed VMWare machine, haven't tried that yet.

Overall, this is what a XUL-based system should look like - no fuss, intuitive, clean, no garbage sent or received - a clean data communication, well-made.

There's also an example demo page for you to try the interface, so you don't even have to install the backend if you want to see how the CMS works, it's in the description. You can also check the XUL CMS page, with the main features described, to get an idea how it looks before installing.

Oh, and it's being updated pretty regularly, so not another dead XUL tryout :)