I recently launched a new web site for Robert Eatman Enterprises. Robert Eatman is an agent for radio talent, aka on-air personalities, aka DJs. The site represent a pretty strong step in a slightly new direction for Telos Studios. It has a Content Management System based on the Symfony framework. The site is also uses some other modern techniques - more on this in a bit.

A few words about a CMS vs. a framework

A Content Management System is a great way of managing relatively generic content that has no strong semantic relationship to other content. A CMS, like WordPress - a specialized blogging CMS, works well for managing general content, but when you want more advanced possibilities designing the content structures requires more flexibility than a CMS can handle.

In contrast, a framework is not really meant for general content, but, because of a framework’s flexibility, a CMS can be designed into the system. In addition, a framework also allows for very specific datasets. I prefer this. It allows me to design a generic content module and makes it easier to design structures for specific data. This is really handy when design content for membership rosters, tagging data, calendar events, and much more. Essentially, there is a lot of power in a framework that most CMSes don’t allow for without some serious manipulation of the core models.

Techniques uses on Eatman

Beyond the framework based site, the Robert Eatman web site uses these techniques:

• SIFr
• IE PNG Fix
• CSS image replacement

All in all, I am pretty happy with the site and the fact that I am settling on some techniques that should make it easy to create custom web sites much easier.