LEARNING LOG 1 (Karlie)

CMS verses BLOGS

Both blogs and content management systems (CMS) “invite social interactivity” and one is able to “leave comments, register as a user or…become a contributor” (www.unfoldingneurons.com) however I want to investigate what the difference is between the two with regards to purpose and how they work. I will mainly focus on CMS’s and will refer to comparisons of blogs.

I logged on to www.blogger.com which is obviously where I could create my own blog and signed up as a user. I had to enter personal details in to the form presented. It was that simple. I was then able to log on and enter my own content, via an administrative frontier, that was then presented on to the displayed web page that the rest of the world sees. Similarly, I logged on to www.myspace.com which is said to be a CMS and then signed up as a user. Likewise I had to fill in a form of my personal details. Once this was done I was then able to add more information, as I did in the blog, via the modules and “blocks [that] are added to build the website.” (www.unfoldingneurons.com) Where CMS’s have many modules and blocks already, blogs merely have “one module (which is the core)” and have the option to add more blocks such as widgets or plugins.

After adding content to my CMS via the administrative interface I opened the source from the displayed profile page in an attempt to find the information I imputed via the administrative page; the ‘About me’ section:


[SOURCE CODE via my appendix]


Although I did find it as expected I was still rather confused as to how exactly these pages all interlink and work together; particularly how the administrative page works with the actual displayed profile page. Baring this in mind I decided to go back to the administrative page. I viewed the source to search for the ‘about me’ section.


[SOURCE CODE via my appendix]


Both the source of the admin page and the source of the display page held my added content and on both I could edit my content. I carried out the same test with my blog: I viewed the source of both the admin page and the display page. This time I edited my blog entry in both and saved it. When I opened it as an html page the content had changed.


[Print screens via my Appenix]


Regardless, what I realised was that although the displayed webpage did change due to the source change, this page could only be viewed locally on my desktop. The changes were not actually made to the broadcasted webpage. Changes could only be made via the administrative interface.

Furthermore when I tried to compare the source from my administrative interface for my blog, as I was writing a new blog entry, what I had written wasn’t appearing in the source. However once I saved the entry and viewed the source again, whilst still in the admin page, it did then appear!

Things were starting to become clearer; I could now make links to what I was experiencing and what I had found via my research:
The diagram below from http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_what/index.html shows the basic way in which a CMS (and a blog for that matter) work.


[Diagram Via my Appendix]


Clearly I have experienced that the content creation and the presentation of my profile are at two ends of the spectrum where the CMS manages the link between the two. “Once a page has been created, it is saved into a central repository in the CMS”. This gives reason to why the blog entry only appeared in the source once I clicked ‘save’. This is also how the information that I type in via the admin interface is then loaded up for presentation, hence why the ‘about me’ section was in both the source of the admin page AND the display page. “The CMS will build the site navigation for you, by reading the structure straight out of the content repository.” No HTML skills are required as the admin interface automatically creates the code for you and implements your content, hence why when I edit information via the admin interface it will then automatically appear in the source once the changes have been saved. It is simply a user friendly access method to changing the source code non-technically.

When I compared both sources (admin vs. display page) there was a clear difference between the two with regards to the ‘About me’ section in my CMS. The admin pages clearly used PHP (the presented page did not in the ‘about me’ section):

...textarea name="ctl00$ctl00$Main$ProfileEditContent$editInterests$AboutMeText" rows="15" cols="20" id="ctl00_ctl00_Main_ProfileEditContent_editInterests_AboutMeText"

This is clearly PHP as recognized through the use of the dollar signs; “the dollar sign in PHP is used to represent variables rather than money. \$5.00 could also be written as '$5'.” (http://www.webreference.com/programming/php/by_example/2.html) Clearly the highlighted coding conveys the location of the area of text titled ‘About me’; hence $Main$ProfileEditContent (etcetera)

On the other hand, I could not detect any PHP in the source for the blog admin page yet I could still notice a very apparent difference when I compared it to the source of the blog display page:


[Source Codes via my Appendix]


Clearly there is a huge difference between the code for the admin page and the code for the display page. The admin page consists of all the detailed HTML and JavaScript that determines what the display page will look like hence why it will also determine the source code for the display page. Additionally, I also found out that once you embed PHP
in to a HTML script, save it and then “view the document source…the listing would look exactly like a normal HTML document” (Meloni C. J PHP, MySQL and Apache 3rd ed. P.74) This undoubtedly gives reason to why I can find hardly any PHP scripting.

Additionally, within the source for the blog admin page (not the CMS) I also noticed the following line of code:
_widgetManager._Registerwidget…

Undeniably, this brings more of my research to light; as blogs do not have many modules and blocks like CMSs, blogs can however add more plugins or widgets hence the above code. I have not yet found out what widget this is referring to in my blog, as I am still navigating my way through the basic similarities and differences in the components of CMSs and blogs through my own exploration and research.

When I edited my profile on www.myspace.com I was able to add music, pictures and videos by planting the code in to one of the blocks via the admin page (unlike in my blog where I could only add text and pictures). The language used to create these interactive websites is PHP which makes sense as it can be “embedded or combined with the HTML or a website” (W. Hugh and L. David, PHP and MySQL, p.16)

Therefore I searched the source of my CMS display page for the use of PHP in order to see whether it had been used for any of the multimedia on my profile. The first I found was within a hyper reference:

http://www.urbnmix2.net/video.php?id=adam_sandler_grow_old_with_you

I copied this in to a new window browser and found that it linked to a whole new website. The only PHP used referred to a number of these ‘urbanmix2.net/video’ links.


[Source code via Appendix]


I found these links within the comments added, by other users, on my profile. This makes sense as this is where the videos were implemented. “PHP's ability includes outputting images, PDF files and even Flash movies” (http://uk.php.net/manual/en/intro-whatcando.php)

Clearly this also demonstrates what I have learned that PHP is often used to incorporate “dynamic content derived from user input” (W. Hugh and L. David, PHP and MySQL, p.18) On top of this, the fact that I could find only the .php URLs and not the actual PHP coding for these elements proves what Larry Ullman states that “PHP scripts need to be parsed by the server…you absolutely must access PHP scripts via the URL. You cannot simply open them in your web browser.” (PHP and MySQL for dynamic web sites 2nd ed. p.5)

I then attempted to change the look of my ‘myspace’ profile by using a template. Again I simply copied the relevant code in to one of the modules. This gives reason to my research that states that the majority of CMS’s have a “main core…[where] these various ‘modules’ and ‘blocks’ are added…and then skinned by a theming / templating system.” (www.unfoldingneurons.com) This is clearly what allows the user to embed their contributed content in to different templates as the blocks/modules can be extracted and transferred, “leaving existing content and page architecture untouched… [as] the CMS will pull the content into the new look” (http://typo3.com/What_is_a_CMS.1351.0.html) On the other hand, I was unable to completely change the layout of my blog as “generally speaking the components [structure] stays the same” as a blog “is usually a core defaulting to a certain layout”. (http://www.unfoldingneurons.com/2007/cms-vs-blogno-you-dont-need-pepto-bismol) hence the one module that it consists of as opposed to many.

I’ve learned the basics of how blogs and CMS’s are similarly and differently structured and the basics of how they work using “content display sections” and modules via an “administrative interface.” (http://www.unfoldingneurons.com/2007/cms-vs-blogno-you-dont-need-pepto-bismol) Blogs are merely a very simple version of a CMS; practically an element of a CMS hence; a CMS can include a ‘blog’ along with plenty more elements due to its more flexible foundation; its larger number of modules and blocks. Blogs “usually [have] one purpose”: to share information, whereas a CMS can have a number of purposes from being a “community hub via forums" (http://www.unfoldingneurons.com/2007/cms-vs-blogno-you-dont-need-pepto-bismol)
to selling products.

Where I came across some PHP I have also learned some basic PHP language as demonstrated in my appendix and how it is embedded in to HTML but can not be viewed via the document source.

In this learning log I have touched up on a number of factors relating to CMS’s and Blogs; form simply changing content via the administrative interface to investigating in to the basics of the language used to create them; PHP. As this is my first learning log, I have only surfaced such areas as I knew little about the whole subject. This has given me a basic foundation of which I can home in on one of the surfaced areas and really deepen my knowledge on that specific matter later on.

I have found that I most took an interest in the PHP language and how it is used within HTML pages yet hidden in the document source. Although this was probably the most technical and complex finding of this learning log, PHP for me is the most intriguing aspect of my findings and I plan to indulge in a learning log that focuses just on this later on.