# Integrating Rails Application with a CMS

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/integrating-rails-application-with-a-cms/107865>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 26, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/integrating-rails-application-with-a-cms/107865 "2007-06-26T23:36:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![siegi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@siegi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/siegi)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/integrating-rails-application-with-a-cms/107865/1 "2007-06-26T23:36:41Z")

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hi,

can anyone please share his experience with me on integrating a rails  
app with a cms?

what i want to do is to write the application logic in rails  
but manage all navigation issues and text/image content using a cms.

the cms should be open source, integrate easily and have a large user  
base.

which cms would best fulfil those requirements?

radiant, mephisto, typo3, joomla, drupal, …

where can i find more docs on integrating with a rails app?

many thanks in advance,  
siegi

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![siegi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@siegi](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/siegi)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2007, 2:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/integrating-rails-application-with-a-cms/107865/2 "2007-06-27T02:49:56Z")

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It depends what you mean by integrate 🙂

we use comatose, which is not as fully featured out of the box as some  
of  
the cms systems you mentioned -  
but allows extremely tight integration of your rails webapp with the  
cms.

[http://comatose.rubyforge.org/](http://comatose.rubyforge.org/)

Really, as with all things, it depends on your needs -

if the content parts of your site are very separate, then no problem:  
use one of the cms systems in your list that you like, perhaps radiant  
just  
to keep everything rails-esque.

if commonly a single page will include embedded content you want to  
manage,  
and at the same time display a view from your rails app,  
then you either need to go with something like comatose which plugins  
into  
your rails ap, and let’s you embed content with render calls,  
or come up with some other clever way to combine rails views with html  
from  
an external site - I don’t know a great way to do that personally, but  
no  
doubt it can be done - perhaps using some javascript on the page to  
display  
the result of a call to the external cms as html, or using iframes, or a  
custom helper to pull the content on the serverside and render it -  
there  
are ways.

Anyway - that was the thought process that lead me to comatose - of  
course I  
have no idea where your needs lie, but there’s my 2 cents anyway.

-Andrew K.  
[http://beginsinwonder.com](http://beginsinwonder.com)

On 6/26/07, siegi [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> the cms should be open source, integrate easily and have a large user
> 
> >

–  
Andrew K.