Comments for eZ Publish
Re: Excellent
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Re: *** WARNING ***
> Ghad. Who uses PHP as a CGI module or
> Apache without
> virtual hosts? Thats's crazy talk.
Not even funny.
Re: PHP5
> % Attn: ezPublish doesn't work with
> PHP5!
> Correct. eZ publish will be ported to
> PHP5 once PHP5 is stable enough and
> has gained enough markedshare
> to be used by big PHP applications like
> eZ publish.
Folks, you could have been more honest and just say "we're too few".
TYPO3 is doing PHP5 and MySQL5 for quite a time, and even if I personally don't do "bleeding edge" and run it on Linux 2.4, Apache 1.3, PHP4 and MySQL4, it's better to have choice.
We've considered eZ when choosing a major CMS/CMF two years ago but it was put away with Drupal (with Mambo not even considered, and its licensing/marketing troubles are quite an example of how *not* to blend free software and money... good luck to eZ to avoid that, but it's hard).
Re: PHP5
> Attn: ezPublish doesn't work with PHP5!
Correct. eZ publish will be ported to PHP5 once PHP5
is stable enough and has gained enough markedshare
to be used by big PHP applications like eZ publish.
An optimistic guess is a year from now.
PHP5
Attn: ezPublish doesn't work with PHP5!
Re: Needs Work
> Although I think the system is great
> (and I am using it on one of my sites)
> there are a number of problems.
>
OK, let me respond to this post (and the others, which are wildly out of date now as the product is on 3.4, and almost on 3.5, and many of the problems they experienced were typical new version release problems IMHO.
Let me say that I work for FireBright.com, a company that deals with eZ Publish, but we are keenly aware of the weaknesses and strengths of the platform and consider ourselves fairly objective (at least compared to someone who is complaining about virtual hosts and cgi mode (even a $5/mo account can be had that eliminates those problems).
> 1) Poorly supported for users
> CMS systems like this rely on open
> communication with the creators, and
> experienced users.
> Although the system is free, the
> ezpublish team charges for support ($500
> for a half year) so they do not answer
> many questions on their own forums in a
> timely manner. You can wait over a weeks
> for a response from anyone somtimes
> (their support is one rate for a 1-day
> response, and 3-days for a 3-day
> response). So it can be hard to get
> answers to questions asked
>
>
True. Absolutely. But most open CMS solutions DO NOT have commercial support even available.
The forums are actually just *one* way to get support, and in fact are generally used by the beginners. eZ Publish has a lot of smaller communities, and a very strong developer community that's on a first name basis. There is also a really great irc channel where support can be had, but most beginners don't know or use it.
The forums need to be improved, as they're not up to speed with vBulletin or other best-of-breed dedicated forum software.
However, there are a number of deployment outfits that also provide support for eZ. Most people that have serious problems with setup and management are trying to do it on a cheap web host, and commoditized servers just don't cut it for serious cms development.
While I'm on topic here, let me address SQL scalability. You know, that was a really serious problem with the 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 releases, which were gradually optimized. The 3.3 release this summer took the pages down to just 10-12 queries for all but the most complex stuff.
That said, the number of queries doesn't really matter that much unless you've got caching turned off. You can use Turck MMCache or Zend Accelerator (or Performance Suite) as a drop in to dramatically improve page cache performance, but the built in Caching in eZ Publish provides a profound speed increase. I say that as someone who mantains hundreds of installations of eZ and other CMS solutions -- unless you know how to run caching with complex php applications, you'll hit the wall early. Properly cached, I've eZ Publish scale to millions of hits per day, and hundreds of thousands on a virtual dedicated server setup (we're talking 35GB per day kind of traffic -- a fair amount considering it's not even a dedicated server). That statement was very accurate when my fellow geek made it, but if that's your only complaint, I would encourage you to look at some of the more recent code.
> 2) Poor documentation
> the documentation was so sparse that
> users had to organize to create their
> own documentation. things that are
> missing include easy step-by-step
> walkthroughs, etc...
> the docs are getting better, but it is
> still very hard to get started in some
> cases.
>
Indeed. I know from talking to eZ Publish that documentation has been a major striking point against the system. While not perfect, it was *much* improved in the 3.3 release, and is a major focus for them.
As a third party provider working with the system, we have extensive documentation about eZ Publish available, however, eZ's documentation tends to be a little scattered.
The next release of the product, due out in October of 2004, provides major administrative area improvements, documentation upgrades, and much more.
Remember you're not dealing with phpnuke here -- this is a truly complex OO cms system, and documentation will catch up.
There was a major shift when eZ went from v2 to v3 which really cast eZ Publish in a bad light. The product was re-written from the ground up. eZ3 has nothing to do really with eZ2, besides looking somewhat similar. Under the covers, different animals. Since it was a new platform, it got a lot of attention initially, and then interest waned as is often the case with .releases (why do you think every freekin' commercial software release is a x.0 revision and not a 0.x like it should be?).
The product is about a million times better than it was in the beginning of 2004 even, and most importantly headed in the right direction.
> 3) lack of community
> the main forum for ezpublish is on the
> ezpublish site, and is hard to use. you
> can't search for terms like php, or
> admin since they are automatically
> deleted from the search as being small
> words. In addition, the forums
> themselves are poor and lack features
> like e-mail notification of replies.
>
Couldn't agree more. Nothing to defend there. eZ needs to get their s**t together on this one, as the forums kind of suck.
>
> 4) not a lot of mods.
> if it ain't in there, you're going to
> be writing it yourself. the system is
> great for expandability, but due to lack
> of community it doesn't seem like a lot
> of people are expanding the useability.
>
Depends. I mean, there are a lot of mods, but remember that this system is not a php script kiddy system -- it's used by a lot of research institutions, etc. It's a serious commercial system, and a lot of the code that's written for the platform is commercially licensed by big customers.
> I encourage people to visit their
> website, and see if you agree with these
> comments.
> if these things change, I will gladly
> update, or append this comment.
>
I think you don't need to update or append this comment. It's actually quite valid, and should be left for historical commentary if nothing else. You're points are valid, and I know that eZ (developers of eZ Publish) read them, as I talk to them occasionally.
Every major problem put fourth by the community has been addressed and fixed by the eZ Publish crew in the 3.x releases. While there is still a ways to go, I have to say that I think eZ Publish is *one of* the best of breed platforms for cms.
Plone is probably the other platform that really deserves serious attention. Magnolia (.info if you're interested) is another system that has a heck of a lot of potential, but isn't there yet (same feedback that you have here came up on the mailng list for them just *yesterday!*).
But there are a *host* of other cms solutions out there that are popular in the marketplace despite the fact that they suck (even some of the big ones), and I would encourage you to take another look at eZ Publish, and most importantly, keep an eye on it into early 2005. I personally think that you may want to go back for a second look.
>
Version 3.3 is OK
Without any fuss and without paying much attention, I installed version 3.3 on a Linux system running Apache 2 with PHP mod and MySQL 4. For a PHP program, I was surprised how nice the installer is... The URL rewriting feature is excellent--something everything system should have. The included samples are decent.
I would recommend this for systems where non-technical people need to keep up a web site.
I may not use ezPublish, but it gave me some good ideas.
Wildly inefficient use of SQL queries
This software makes such inefficient use of SQL
queries it is almost comical. At a guess,
displaying a typical page results in tens,
perhaps as many as a hundred SQL queries! It is
close to a text-book example of how not to write
efficient PHP/SQL code.
Do *not* use this software if you expect more
than a few hundred hits a day, and make sure you
run it on a beefy server. That lesson cost a
friend of mine weeks of work, she eventually
reimplemented the site in pure PHP and greatly
regrets not doing it sooner.
Installation
Sorry to sound sacastic, but can you make the install notes any more confusing? Don't explain how to create the MySQL database usless your discussing how to install MySQL etc. - We know that. Just say "... create a database named ezbuilder" and move on to the next step. Besides, you don't need to be root to install the db and import .sql.
One more thing, we're not all installing via SSH or local so better to keep instructions simple and to the point. I'd almost think this was written by a microsoft person based on the language and choice of words used. Also, I was lost when the notes came to all this "xxx" stuff. Not too helpful I'm afraid. Sorry! :-( Hope I've not been too harsh.
Excellent framework.