Now is the time for the development of another new product. Before I head forward to do anything, I sit down and try to come up with a tracking mechanism, as I was being told our development process is not transparent at all.
I started with a list of thing which I want to achieve from the tool,
- Categorize the entry
- Allow visitor to leave comment
- Searchable!
- Can ease my documentation effort
- Time tracking or something like completion
- Can integrate with the other resources, e.g. version control, file server, etc.
We have used
Basecamp from 37Signals and it serves most of the purpose. The only downside is, information are stored on their server, which we have some hesitation. We want to put everything in this single repository which means confidential information could be found.
So, we decided to host it on our server. The decision in using a blog is very natural but limitation shows immediately, like how do we use it as a file repository and integration with document generation is no easy task. Then, we consider in using a traditional CMS, but setting up and publishing with a CMS is a daunting process.
A couple of candidates that pops up immediately,
- activeCollab
- Drupal
- Expression Engine
- Wordpress
Before reading forward, be warned that
the comment below is my very own view. Sometimes, it's even goes to my personal aesthetic, so you could be seeing it way differently from me. ;)
activeCollab is an easy to use, web based, open source collaboration and project management tool.
It is a mock-up of Basecamp, which allow the user to install and run it on their own server. Hey, isn't this THE solution I am looking for?
Having said that, you know I have turned my back away. The main gripe is, it is not mature for production yet. 0.6 was released and I have heard about a lot of changes will be done in 0.7. I am willing to try out new thing but not that new as yet to reach even the alpha release. ;)
To be fair, it looks really promising, and everything was done by Ilija Studen alone. I think the project is now expanding with more contributor and I will definitely re-visit it again at later time.
Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website.
The software was developed by 2 university student back in 2000 and it has already gone through 4 versions with version 5.0 on the horizon. It is a powerful system that provides a complete set of basic features like user management, access security control and a nice publishing framework. Also, it is extensible, which module can be written and operate in extending what it can do.
The installation procedure is straight forward, at least I can get it work in the first shot, but configuring the system to suit your need will take some time. I can have the first post published in minutes. Indeed, there are a lot of little options, finding out the way in customization is not easy. Also, you will need to navigate between pages and I find the loading speed is on the slower side.
One of the reason why I want to try out Drupal is for the use of Project and PDF module. The Project Module allows me to set project information like project website, CVS tree (via viewcvs which allow you to scan through the repository from the browser), documentation, etc.
After that, I can add issue (which can be a new task or a bug submission), and assign priority as a new content.
These features covers the basis for project tracking but it's not flexible, especially for the issues manipulation. Issues can be glanced as a summary with information like last update and assigned to. I can even sort it by project or priority.
And yet, I find the content creation is clumsy, especially in the initial setup phase. I have to jump from the administration page to the content creation page from time to time. Besides, the content to be shown is too crowded (I am using the theme "pushbutton") which introduce the barrier in using. Also, the category for each issue is predefined, and the content editting page is limiting. Like if I want to attach a picture in between, I have to firstly have it uploaded and enter the link manually.
Again, we step away from using Drupal, for the time needed in managing the site is a bit too much to me. We just want to jump in and out quickly.
ExpressionEngine, our flagship product, is a modular, flexible, feature-rich web publishing system.
ExpressionEngine supports great add-on modules - an image gallery, a moblog module, and our new discussion forum, to name just a few - so you can build your dream site.
I first heard about this product from
Veerle's blog 2.0. Her blog is definitely a joy to read, informative and with a VERY NICE layout.
It has a rich user base and availability of a large volume of additional modules. pMachine themselves has developed a number of them, from image gallery to forum. Apart from that, developers around the world can submit their module to pMachine and have it verified, before putting it up on their server for user to download. This can ensure the reliability of each module available.
I tried the community edition provided by pMachine, following their nice installation procedure, and have my copy running shortly. The admin pages are solid, the flow is very natural and it's a pleasing to the eye. The module and plugin development is very structural, by just implementing a clearly defined set of functions.
And yet, I didn't land my vote on this product, which relates a lot to my personal taste.
- It's difficult to change template
- PHP 4 instead of 5 is used. I prefer something more OO in nature. OK, it has nothing to do with functions, just my geek factor has some influence on this.
- Template customization is powerful, or too powerful. I don't want to learn everything in adding a link or change a color.
WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
I ended up using this after testing out all the products above. But the funny thing is, it was the first product that comes up in mind but turns away instantly by myself.
Let's do something different, by commenting on what I dislike first.
Documentation integration will be a pain. Concering there is no API available in retrieving each post and there are next to zero plugin that was designed for project tracking (OK, there's a todo plugin somehow). The handling of angle bracket in the editor can make content creation a problem. The issue is that, the angle bracket was not handled properly as the editor always try to taken it out which makes code posting impossible.
But it provides something that I am seeing as more valuable (and I have located work around somehow).
First of all, installation is painless. Although I have been installing WordPress on numbers of machines, I am still enjoying the 2 steps process everytime.
Getting into the system and setup the basic web site structure is painless. The admin site layout is just as fluid as Expression Engine and the use of AJAX effect is clever. It's not sole for eye catching but serve the functions well, too. The page preview in post construction is a very welcome feature. Also, by disabling the visual rich editor can solved the angle bracket issue.
Also, I have located a very good PDF plugin that allows PDF generation for each entry which helps somehow in the document generation.
One last thing, most of the people in the project team is familiar with this product, having them getting used to this system is at no cost at all.
Now, all set and done, I will share the details on how to customize WordPress into our project tracking software in my next entry.
