Content Management with Bricolage
by David Wheeler
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Pages: 1, 2, 3
Bricolage document models are built into a tree-like structure of
elements and fields. Elements are the building
blocks of content in Bricolage. They represent various parts of documents,
such as pages; side bars; related media such as images, lists, related
links; and the like. Every element can contain zero or more sub-elements,
and together the hierarchy of elements make up the "branches" of the
document model tree. Fields represent the "leaves", and are the
containers into which content can be entered. Any kind of HTML field can
be defined for use in the Bricolage UI, including text input
fields, textarea fields, and select
lists. Typical fields include "paragraphs," "headers," "list
items," "teasers," and "URLs."
When an editor creates a document, it is based on a document model, and its structure must adhere to the model's element structure. Documents consist of a tree structure of elements, corresponding to the element structure of the document model, and in this way ensure the consistency of structure across documents. For more on Bricolage document modeling and elements, watch for the third article in this series, "Bricolage Document Modeling."
Separation of Content from Presentation
Since Bricolage document models are purely about structure, and a document's content will be stored in Bricolage in the same structured fashion as its model defines, no presentation information is generally included in a document. In other words, the content of a document is pure content, with little or no reference to formatting. Instead, it is a simple structural object representing the tree-like configuration of content elements.
The upside to this architecture is that highly structured content enables a virtually unlimited array of output options. The templates that format content can take advantage of the well-defined composition of a document model to grab the elements they need for the format they understand. Thus, a single document can be used to output a structured XML file, a set of HTML pages, an RSS feed, a PDF file, or whatever you require.
Done right, you get the Holy Grail of one canonical document and unlimited representations of that document. This capability is especially important in the fast-moving environment of the Internet, where new formatting standards are regularly introduced, demanding the creation of new templates to output existing content to satisfy the new standards.
Content Categorization
All Bricolage documents can be organized into one or more categories. These categories are hierarchical, and the hierarchies are used in part to create document URLs. This design allows you to store your documents in sensible locations on your web site, and provides them with legible URLs that search engines just love. Furthermore, it's easy to search for documents in a given category or set of categories using the Bricolage API, so that you can quickly create templates to generate category-specific directories of documents, such as RSS feeds.
Bricolage allows you to create an unlimited number of hierarchical categories in which to file documents.
Meaningful URLs
In addition to categories, Bricolage document URLs can include the
year, month, day of the month, and/or a slug — which is a
short string describing the document, such as "bricolage-intro."
Combined, these pieces of metadata generate meaningful URLs, such
as /features/perl/2004/17/26/bricolage-intro for a Perl
feature introducing Bricolage and published on 26 July 2004. Such URLs are
very search-engine friendly, too, so they should greatly enhance your
Google rankings, for example.
Keywords
Bricolage documents can be associated with arbitrary keywords. These,
too, can be queried via the Bricolage API, making keyword indexes a
possibility. And of course, they're available in templates for
outputting <meta> tags, Dublin Core Metadata, and the like.
Workflow
Bricolage provides a workflow interface for managing your documents and templates. A workflow is a way to organize the process of creating a document. Typically, a document workflow defines areas of responsibility in the process of creating a document, such as writing, copy editing, legal review, and publishing. True to its original genesis among newspaper publishers, Bricolage workflows divide these responsibilities between desks. So one might have a workflow named "Document" for managing documents, with an "Edit Desk," a "Copy Desk," a "Legal Desk," and a "Publish Desk."
Bricolage workflows can be configured to reflect your organization's standard editorial processes.
You can create as many workflows as your organization requires, each with as many desks as you require. Desks can be shared across workflows — if you need certain parties to assume similar responsibilities in different workflows — and you can set up permissions such that certain users have access only to the documents in specific workflows and on specific desks. In short, you have a lot of flexibility to closely model the actual workflow in your organization, so that working with Bricolage is simply an extension of your users' standard editorial processes.
Output Channels
Output channels are collections of templates that output content in
particular formats. Typical Bricolage solutions in production today have
output channels for XHTML, RSS, WML, etc. Furthermore, output channels can
include templates from other output channels. When Bricolage looks for a
template, it looks in the output channel being published to, and then any
output channels it includes. The search for the template resembles how
Perl searches through the @INC array for a module. The upshot
is that Bricolage makes it easy for you to create libraries of templates
that can be used across output channels.
Bricolage templates correspond to document categories and elements, so that one element template outputs the content of a single element, or wraps the output of document-element templates for all documents in a category. Because a single element definition can be associated with different document models, this approach ensures the formatting of the content in elements based on that definition will be consistent across all documents.
Perl Templating
The templates in Bricolage output channels can be implemented in one of three templating architectures: Mason, Template Toolkit, or HTML::Template.
Yes, that's right, not only do you have three different choices for templating in Bricolage, but they're all Perl-based! In addition to being able to provide a familiar templating environment to tens of thousands of Perl programmers worldwide, the templating solutions can leverage the full power of Perl to generate output for your documents. That power of course includes CPAN, where you'll find modules to ease the generation of RSS feeds, HTML, XML, PDFs, or even Excel files!
Furthermore, Bricolage has a sub-classable templating architecture, which means that, with a little bit of work, you can add your own templating architecture. Anyone care to add support for Embperl, Apache::ASP, or XSLT?
For more on Bricolage templating, watch for the fourth article in this series, "Mason Templating in Bricolage."
Multi-site Management
More and more organizations are finding themselves managing more and more sites as part of their content-management responsibilities. As of version 1.8.0, Bricolage offers support for managing multiple sites from a single instance. Different sites can have their own categories, workflows (but share desks), output channels (but can include output channels from other sites), and distribution destinations. They can also share document models, so that different sites can manage the same types of documents but publish them with their own templates. This flexible multi-site management allows you to divide responsibilities appropriately while keeping all content centrally managed and accessible via a common interface.
You can manage any number of different sites in Bricolage, each with its own documents, categories, templates, and workflows.
