Guust Nieuwenhuis talks about “MASA ColdFusion CMS (new open source Content Manager)” in this episode of the ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light.
“he’s joining us to talk about MASA CMS, a new CMS launched about a year and a half ago. It’s a fork out of the famous Muira CMS. And we’ll talk about why you even want to use a CMS at all, we’ve got some astounding statistics out of the confusion. State of the Union survey will be run every year that I think are important regarding this.”
Contents
Show notes
-
What is MASA?
- ColdFusion Entrepreneur CMS
-
What is a CMS?
- Content Management System
- Store content in a database rather than hard coding in CF files
- Letting users at your organization edit content directly
- Avoids delays from developers updating content
- Or users editing CFM files directly and creating bugs in your code
- Workflow and control of content updates
-
Why use a CMS?
- Better control of content edits
- Safer
- Better features
-
What CMSes do CFers use?
-
Why MASA?
-
Introduction to MASA CMS
- Roots in Mura CMS (open source version 7.1)
- 1.5 years ago fork from Mura
- Rebrand
- Legal check
- Removed commercial software dependencies so it is
- GPL 2 license
- Source, docs and discussion hosted on GitHub
- Mura changed to closed source in version 10
- Roots in Mura CMS (open source version 7.1)
-
Enterprise Content Management
- Features
- User roles, Workflow, version sets, content staging (previous draft)
- EU website store sales rules
- Security
-
Features of MASA CMS
- UX easy to use
- Documentation
- New Admin file browser
- Layout manager – WYSIWYG drag and drop modules into your content page
- Inline edits
- Themes
- Look and feel of while site, CSS, colors etc
- Custom modules
- Plugins
- Non-visual functionality customization
- Admin functionality
- Modules
- Visual element with code
- Widgets
- Text box
- Image gallery
- Video
- Etc
- Events
- Rich event lifecycle
- Clear naming convention
- Many hooks to let you customize MASA using custom plugins
- Eg OnBeforeContentSave, OnAfterContentSave
- OO approach is good for MASA and not required
- ORM and beans
- API
- Front end JavaScipt access to MASA via API
- Adobe API
- M-tag
- When creating content in Masa CMS you use the [m] tag for rendering dynamic content. This is a very powerful way to access CFML and Masa functionality. Call CF custom functions from your content.
- Workflows
- Create a custom group workflow
-
MASA statistics
- Thousands of content pages
- Hundreds of content editors/approvers
-
Mura backward compatibility
- Very easy from the latest Mura open source version (7.1) – just a config file
- For earlier versions of Mura, you need to update a bit more in the code.
- Guust’s company can help with this.
- Future MASA versions have semantic versioning (https://semver.org/) eg 7.4.1
- Major version number = 7
- May have breaking changes or big changes
- A minor version number with the Major = 4
- No breaking changes
- Batch version number within the Minor = 1
- Small bug fixes
- Ember.js is a good example of version numbers
- 6-week minor version release cycle
- When enough changes they roll up all the minor versions to a new major version with depreciations of old features.
- Major version number = 7
-
Deployment options on different infrastructure
- ACF
- Lucee
- Cloud and Docker
- MySQL, SQL Server, Progress, Oracle
- Test suite
-
What is the plan for new features?
- Roadmap
- Headless CMS
- Content Mobile
- Decoupled CMS
- Static content edited via admin in a separate site
- How many versions does MASA have so far?
- Support agreements
- MASA cloud hosting
- Going to CFCamp
Mentioned in this episode
- MASA CMS
- MASA GitHub
- Masa CMS Documentation
- API Manager Mike Brunt episode
- TechEmpower CF test suite Brad
Listen to the Audio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
Bio
Guust Nieuwenhuis is a Full Stack Web Wizard with experience in a wide range of technologies. Over the last couple of years, he has been involved in projects for various clients like the European Commission, NSHQ (NATO), Adobe, AS Adventure Group, NS (Dutch railways), CZ Groep, Proximus, Avery Dennison and Mediagenix.
Through We Are North, we do ‘Customization-As-A-Service'. We don’t build from scratch: we find the best solutions out there and tailor them to our customers’ business needs. In doing so, we never lose sight of the goal of the client.
In his free time, he plays the double bass and drums, crosses the forest on his mountain bike and coaches the youth at their local football club (where he is a board member as well). He likes spending time with his wife and two kids or meeting friends for a chat, game or drink.
If he still has some time left, he mainly spends it behind his computer to fulfill his hunger for the latest trends in IT.
Links
- Guust Nieuwenhuis | LinkedIn
- MASA Website
- Website We Are North
- CFML slack channel DM
- [email protected]
Interview transcript
Michaela Light 0:01
Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Guust Nieuwenhuis, I didn't totally mangle up your duck short Belgium name is it Dutch or Belgium?
Guust Nieuwenhuis 00:07
I'm a bit of both mixture there.
Michaela Light 0:09
And he's joining us to talk about Massa CMS, a new CMS launched about a year and a half ago. It's a fork out of the famous Muira CMS. And we'll talk about why you even want to use a CMS at all, we've got some astounding statistics out of the confusion. State of the Union survey will be run every year that I think are important regarding this. And we'll also look at what's in Mac features in masa, what’s coming up in the future and why it's some really cool software. So welcome, Guust.
Guust Nieuwenhuis 0:51
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Michaela Light 0:53
Yes, it's good to see you here. If you don't know him, he's a full-stack web wizard according to his bio. I don't know what a web wizard is. But it sounds exciting. And he's been doing cold fusion forever. Working in Europe, the EU and NATO and Adobe and all kinds of clients they have. And his company, we are north. They do customization as a service. So they help customize solutions. And get your apps running using cold fusion and property master as well. And he is an amateur musician, as well as a coach at the local football club. So welcome ghost,
Guust Nieuwenhuis 1:37
local soccer club for Euro-Americans.
Michaela Light 1:41
Oh, for the Europeans listening to soccer for the Europeans or the Americans.
Guust Nieuwenhuis 1:46
Yeah, let's not get that discussion started. Otherwise, it will be no time for Master CMS anymore.
Michaela Light 1:53
Yeah. So what is Master?
Guust Nieuwenhuis 1:58
What is Master Master? First of all, it's a cold fusion-based content management system. And I think, hopefully, one day, we don't need to mention that anymore. But I still do today. It's a fork from MERA CMS. I think many people in the collision community are familiar with NeuRA. And we, for various reasons, forked from Europe a year and a half ago and created our own version of masa, masa, CMS.
Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers.
Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.
Join the CF Alive revolution
Discover how we can all make CF more alive, modern and secure this year. Join other ColdFusion developers and managers in the CF Alive Inner Circle today.- Get early access to the CF Alive book and videos
- Be part of a new movement for improving CF's perception in the world.
- Contribute to the CF Alive revolution
- Connect with other CF developers and managers
- There is no cost to membership.
