(re)Introducing the Backpage CMS09.01.2010

...because it's been a while

So, what were we up to? Only retooling the 'little CMS that could' into a leaner, meaner beast. We've taken a long hard look at the content management tools arena, jotted down what we liked, crossed out things we hated and imagined things we've never seen but would love to play with. It all fit a pair of beer mats* and looked a little like this:

• HTML5 + xHTML support (we like those trailing slashes!)
• Full screen document editing
• Document versioning
• Sexy but simple UI
• Author transparent search engine optimisation
• A smaller, shared API
• Simpler/smaller database design
• The ability to draft pages (previous versions published 'on-save')
• Much improved external RSS handling
  
• Simple templating that doesn't rely on a programming language to implement
  

We continued to like the flexibility of reading everything from a database on request, but decided to up the ante with more agressive caching. Reexamining the BpTag idea we found it compared well with competing approaches and wasn't broken, so no need to fix it. We also retained the document hierarchy, augmented rather than replaced with a tagging system.

This resulted in a complete rewrite of the administration area and subtle refinements on the user end which has resulted in ... this little puppy!

* Yes, we actually bullet pointed our beer mats!

Tags: blog.