# CMS on Rails 2 and easy to integrate with?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 8, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036 "2008-09-08T15:27:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/1 "2008-09-08T15:27:50Z")

</div>

Hi,

im looking for a CMS in Rails and all posts of that kind that i have  
seen seem outdated…

For an application i need to have app-specific parts + content  
management. I thought of integrating with an existing CMS project in  
Rails. These would be the requirement i would have for a CMS:

Must-have-features:

- Rails 2 compatible
- Easy integration: should be easy to integrate with other parts of  
the website that would be developed also in Rails
- Stable: should be used in production
- Localization support (DB, YAML or GetText)

Nive to have features:

- WYSIWYG editor
- Single sign on

I have been looking at these projects:

- Radiant
- Rubricks (didn’t like the interface)
- RCMS (does not seem active since 2007)
- Railfrog (does not seem active since 2007)
- Comatose (does not seem active since 2007)
- XLSuite (active?)
- Geego (active?)

Do you have any recommendations? Any additional information? Are  
there any other projects out there worth looking at?

Any help or opinion welcome!

Cheers!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/2 "2008-09-08T15:29:01Z")

</div>

I’ve also have come across the following:

- SimpleCMS (too simple for what i have to do)
- Seymore (seems active, runs on rails 2)
- Zena (seems active, runs on rails 2)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 3:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/3 "2008-09-08T15:36:41Z")

</div>

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 9:17 AM, apm [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> For an application i need to have app-specific parts + content  
> management. I thought of integrating with an existing CMS project in  
> Rails. These would be the requirement i would have for a CMS:

Radiant [http://github.com/radiant/radiant/tree](http://github.com/radiant/radiant/tree) is the way to go.

> Must-have-features:
> 
> - Rails 2 compatible

Radiant comes with Rails 2.0.2 in vendor/rails. There is current work to  
move to Rails 2.1.

- Easy integration: should be easy to integrate with other parts of

> the website that would be developed also in Rails

Check out the  
share\_layouts[http://github.com/radiant/radiant-share-layouts-extension/tree/master](http://github.com/radiant/radiant-share-layouts-extension/tree/master)extension.  
Also, look at the  
import-export[http://github.com/radiant/radiant-import-export-extension/tree](http://github.com/radiant/radiant-import-export-extension/tree)extension.

> - Stable: should be used in production

Radiant is very well tested.

> - Localization support (DB, YAML or GetText)

Via DB:  
translator[http://github.com/cradle/radiant-translator-extension/tree/master](http://github.com/cradle/radiant-translator-extension/tree/master)extension.

> Nive to have features:
> 
> - WYSIWYG editor

Radiant extensions exist for  
FCKeditor[http://github.com/djcp/radiant-fckeditor/tree](http://github.com/djcp/radiant-fckeditor/tree)and  
TinyMCE [http://github.com/search?q=radiant+tinymce](http://github.com/search?q=radiant+tinymce).

> - Single sign on

Radiant’s User model is available to the local Rails app:

# User(id: integer, name: string, email: string, login: string,

password:  
string, created\_at: datetime, updated\_at: datetime, created\_by\_id:  
integer,  
updated\_by\_id: integer, admin: boolean, developer: boolean, notes: text,  
lock\_version: integer, salt: string, session\_token: string)

class User \< ActiveRecord::Base

# Default Order

order\_by ‘name’

# Associations

belongs\_to :created\_by, :class\_name =\> ‘User’  
belongs\_to :updated\_by, :class\_name =\> ‘User’

# Validations

validates\_uniqueness\_of :login, :message =\> ‘login already in use’

validates\_confirmation\_of :password, :message =\> ‘must match  
confirmation’, :if =\> :confirm\_password?

validates\_presence\_of :name, :login, :message =\> ‘required’  
validates\_presence\_of :password, :password\_confirmation, :message =\>  
‘required’, :if =\> :new\_record?

validates\_format\_of :email, :message =\> ‘invalid e-mail address’,  
:allow\_nil =\> true, :with =\>  
/^$|^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})$/i

validates\_length\_of :name, :maximum =\> 100, :allow\_nil =\> true,  
:message  
=\> ‘%d-character limit’  
validates\_length\_of :login, :within =\> 3…40, :allow\_nil =\> true,  
:too\_long =\> ‘%d-character limit’, :too\_short =\> ‘%d-character minimum’  
validates\_length\_of :password, :within =\> 5…40, :allow\_nil =\> true,  
:too\_long =\> ‘%d-character limit’, :too\_short =\> ‘%d-character minimum’,  
:if  
=\> :validate\_length\_of\_password?  
validates\_length\_of :email, :maximum =\> 255, :allow\_nil =\> true,  
:message  
=\> ‘%d-character limit’

validates\_numericality\_of :id, :only\_integer =\> true, :allow\_nil =\>  
true,  
:message =\> ‘must be a number’  
…  
end

–  
Tim

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/4 "2008-09-09T02:33:58Z")

</div>

To add my 2 cents …

I have enjoyed using Geego. It is not hugely active, but there is a  
small community of users. It is mostly geared towards small sites. It  
is especially good when non-technical users are responsible for the  
translations.

Radiant seems to be the way to go if you want something bigger. But  
when I was looking at CMSes, I had a really hard time with version  
dependencies of all the radient plugins that I needed. I might get one  
or two plugins to work with a certain version, but the other plugins  
would stop working. In the end, Geego offered me everything I wanted  
in an _almost_ out-of-the-box way.

HTH

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/5 "2008-09-08T19:36:15Z")

</div>

Thanks Tim!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:52am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/6 "2008-09-09T08:52:33Z")

</div>

Hi !

We will be releasing a public beta of Zena in a few weeks (start of  
october). It’s been running in production for nearly two years, we are  
only releasing a public version now because we wanted to stabilize the  
templating laguage zafu.

There’s a lot of information on [http://zenadmin.org](http://zenadmin.org).

Some features:

- no admin interface (in place, WYSIWYG editing)
- fully defined behaviour through the xhtml templating language
- very easy to transform a static xhtml website into a CMS
- groups based access rights, versions, images, etc

Gaspard

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/7 "2008-09-09T08:57:14Z")

</div>

Tim G. wrote:

> Radiant [http://github.com/radiant/radiant/tree](http://github.com/radiant/radiant/tree) is the way to go.
> 
> _snip_

Hi Tim

That’s a fantastic list of things you’ve created. Any chance that I  
could urge you to add it to the Radiant CMS Summer Reboot Documentation  
[1] project? It may go in as something like “Does Radiant have what I  
need?”

[1] [http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer\_Reboot](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer_Reboot)

Cheers  
Mohit.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2008, 3:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/8 "2008-09-10T03:15:26Z")

</div>

Tim G. wrote:

> done.
> 
> [http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Does\_Radiant\_have\_what\_I\_need](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Does_Radiant_have_what_I_need)

Excellent! Thanks a lot 🙂

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
9/10/2008 | 9:13 AM.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/90ced4/32.png) [@apm](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/apm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 9:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cms-on-rails-2-and-easy-to-integrate-with/148036/9 "2008-09-09T21:51:38Z")

</div>

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 2:55 AM, Mohit S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> That’s a fantastic list of things you’ve created. Any chance that I  
> could urge you to add it to the Radiant CMS Summer Reboot Documentation  
> [1] project? It may go in as something like “Does Radiant have what I  
> need?”
> 
> [1] [http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer\_Reboot](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer_Reboot)
> 
> Cheers  
> Mohit.

done.

[http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Does\_Radiant\_have\_what\_I\_need](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Does_Radiant_have_what_I_need)

–  
Tim