# Still active? **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [February 20, 2008, 2:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663 "2008-02-20T14:15:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 2:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/1 "2008-02-20T14:15:26Z")
Hello, I’m a ruby developer and very enthousiastic about Radiant. The review on [Compare CMS - 3](http://www.a3webtech.com/index.php/cms-3.html) mentioning the less mature state of the project and the lack of an installer even made me more enthousiastic. However I am still hesitant using it for a serious business websites. I miss some critical documentation on creating templates for a decent website, i.e. how to use the system in the role of webmaster. Reading the documentation on [radiantcms.org](http://radiantcms.org) didn’t help me much. Fortunately the article in [artofmission.com](http://artofmission.com) cleared up some things for me. Overall I get the impression that project is not very active, judging on releases, the blog and the mailing groups. However I can’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. Is Radiant still alive and kicking? Regards, Maarten Oelering ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 3:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/2 "2008-02-20T15:46:55Z")
Maarten, Let me assuage some of your fears. Radiant is VERY active, people are using the CMS all the time to build websites, and I receive at least 15 messages a day on the mailing lists. Your perception of inactivity in the project may be because we release fairly infrequently, for an open-source project. I would say that’s a combination of the limited time our core developers can devote, the overall quality of the code (fewer bug fixes) and our commitment to that quality (we try not to release broken code). I would not fear using it for “serious business websites”. If you want evidence of its usage in a “serious business website”, look no further than [redken.com](http://redken.com) (USA site) and [redkensalon.com](http://redkensalon.com). Granted, we made heavy customizations to Radiant for that site, but the team I worked with assured me that all of the sites they have built, most of them with a PHP-based CMS, have required an equivalent customization effort. Regarding templates (layouts, actually), Radiant gets out of your way in that regard. Design whatever template you want, Radiant can serve it. If you want to know how to create a layout, it’s best to bootstrap Radiant with the “Styled Blog” template and read its layout(s). They are actually a lot simpler than you might expect. Let me be clear. Radiant won’t do everything for you, but most of your needs will be satisfied by the base installation: designing, creating and publishing pages. For other things, you will need to look into extensions. Sean P.S. Those lacking features made you MORE enthusiastic? Did I understand you correctly? ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/3 "2008-02-20T16:38:39Z")
Hi Sean, Thanks for your extensive reply. I am happy to hear that Radiant is very active. However others might get the same impression as me, which probably would not be the case if [radiantcms.org](http://radiantcms.org) is updated more frequently. But, as you say, the quality of the code is what counts, and not the packaging. The fact that Radiant, like any other CMS, may not do eveything out- of-the-box is not a problem. That’s one of the main reasons why I prefer a Rails based CMS, since it makes developing extensions a lot easier. What made me enthousiastic in the review I mentioned is that Radiant is part of list of well-known CMS’s and considered as an interesting new contenter which looks very promising. As a ruby developer, the only lacking feature I have a problem with is the part about the documentation. I will check out the Styled Blog template as you suggested. This might help me creating the layouts and structure of the site. However my less technical colleagues must also be able to edit content or add pages to the site. If the rather conceptual documentation is extended with more concrete examples, it might help a lot. Cheers, Maarten ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/4 "2008-02-21T18:04:02Z")
Maarten Oelering wrote: > The fact that Radiant, like any other CMS, may not do eveything out- > the site. However my less technical colleagues must also be able to > edit content or add pages to the site. If the rather conceptual > documentation is extended with more concrete examples, it might help > a lot. > > Cheers, > > Maarten Hi Maarten, Here’s the thing - I had proposed a plan for documentation for Radiant on the documents mailing list but have had absolutely no time to contribute to it. However, Radiant is very much alive and a lot is going on. One of the things that gives Radiant a bad name (and in many places a good name) is the fact that it doesn’t have everything and the kitchen sink thrown in. It’s got just enough to do a solid job of content management! It doesn’t come with a dozen styles, templates, etc. that force you to create a certain kind of content/ site. That does mean, however, that you need to design your own layout. OK, so here’s what I’m willing to offer. I wrote a “Hello World” guide for Radiant that talks you through the idea of creating a non-blog style Radiant setup (i.e., starting with an ‘empty’ project). It’s online here: [http://notepad.onghu.com/2007/5/26/hello-world-using-radiant-cms](http://notepad.onghu.com/2007/5/26/hello-world-using-radiant-cms) There’s also another article also at the same blog: [http://notepad.onghu.com/radiant](http://notepad.onghu.com/radiant) ## That said, there are a number of jewels of wisdom on this list and some in the wiki. Unfortunately, the wiki is a bit slow and that’s quite a problem. I still want to get around to the idea of the documentation I had proposed, but I can’t say much till I get more time. Anyway, the idea is here if anyone else is interested. [http://lists.radiantcms.org/pipermail/radiant-docs/2007-December/000034.html](http://lists.radiantcms.org/pipermail/radiant-docs/2007-December/000034.html) Can I ask a question? How many people here are willing to write a one-off _one_ article about using some facet of Radiant in a time period of the next 3 weeks? Shall we aim for that? I’ll write one, I’ll coordinate it if there are at least 10 people willing. Then, we can put them all out. If there are about 15 - 20 people, it would be quite a sudden push! What do you guys thing? Cheers, Mohit. 2/22/2008 | 1:03 AM. ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/5 "2008-02-21T18:17:41Z")
> That said, there are a number of jewels of wisdom on this list and some > in the wiki. Unfortunately, the wiki is a bit slow and that’s quite a > problem. I still want to get around to the idea of the documentation I > had proposed, but I can’t say much till I get more time. Anyway, the > idea is here if anyone else is interested. The core team is working with Andrew Vonderluft to migrate all the Radiant sites (home, demo, dev, wiki) over to a better hosting solution. The wiki will be faster and more reliable after this migration. Getting this stuff off TxD’s shared hosting will be a boon! Sean ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/6 "2008-02-21T18:24:10Z")
Sean C. wrote: > Sean That’s great!! Cheers, Mohit. 2/22/2008 | 1:23 AM. ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2008, 4:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/7 "2008-02-20T16:58:50Z")
Maarten, Yes, I understand the documentation problem. That is one reason why we have been trying to promote the wiki; documentation is time-consuming to write. Sean ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/8 "2008-02-21T19:38:41Z")
Hi Mohit, I’d be willing to contribute an article during the next weeks. Cheers, Casper ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 10:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/9 "2008-02-21T22:51:34Z")
Casper F. wrote: > Hi Mohit, > > I’d be willing to contribute an article during the next weeks. > > Cheers, > Casper I’d be willing to write a howto article on set up, installation and make a basic website. Count me in, Jasper ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 3:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/10 "2008-02-22T15:19:08Z")
Jasper Kooij wrote: > I’d be willing to write a howto article on set up, installation and make > a basic website. > > Count me in, > > Jasper That’s great! So, I now have Casper and Jasper! It’s a good start - I’ll put in one also. Here’s a rough plan - I’ll try and wait for entries till about the 5th of March or so. Then, after that, we’ll set a date of end of March to finish the article and we’ll launch it by first week of April. I think I’ll post a call for articles - so that everyone can get involved 🙂 Also, I’d like to avoid having a few articles about the same thing, so it will be good to ensure that we’ll all do different things 🙂 Cheers, Mohit. 2/22/2008 | 10:18 PM. ---
**Author:** ![Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7bcc69/32.png) [@Maarten\_Oelering](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Maarten_Oelering)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2008, 10:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/still-active/129663/11 "2008-03-14T22:12:50Z")
Here are some really great articles/reviews on Radiant. Maybe these will help alleviate your fears. [http://www.servicecycle.com/blog/2008/01/11/reasons-to-choose-radiant-cms-a-ruby-on-rails-cms/](http://www.servicecycle.com/blog/2008/01/11/reasons-to-choose-radiant-cms-a-ruby-on-rails-cms/) > **[ServiceCycle.com is for sale | HugeDomains](https://www.hugedomains.com/domain_profile.cfm?d=servicecycle.com)** > > Secure the right domain name for your business or website today. Custom tailored payment plans available to fit any budget. Hope this information helps you. It helped me. Maarten Oelering wrote: > Hello, > > I’m a ruby developer and very enthousiastic about Radiant. The review > on [Compare CMS - 3](http://www.a3webtech.com/index.php/cms-3.html) mentioning the less > mature state of the project and the lack of an installer even made me > more enthousiastic.