ewok Content Management System

Version

This is version 0.5.2 of ewok, a beta release.

Being a beta release means:

ewok is likely to contain bugs
internal APIs and data structures are subject to change, so subsequent versions may break things you are using
the documentation is still under development and is often inadequate, out-of-date, or non-existent

Features

ewok is a full-featured web content management system (CMS) written in Perl (Embperl). It attempts to make web content creation easy for non-technical users, while still providing web gurus with all the flexibility and power required to create real websites. ewok features:

a browser-based file manager allowing directory navigation, file uploads, and in-browser editing of files
component-based templating, allowing standard style, header, and footer components to be applied to all pages in a site without any work by content authors
template inheritance, so that style, header, and footer components are inherited by lower-level directories and can be individually overridden at any point in a tree
arbitrary metadata attached to both files and and directories (e.g. owner, title, status, version, next page, etc.), accessible within components and pages (headers, footers, sidebars etc.)
a staging/publishing model that allows flat HTML files to be generated to a publishing area, allowing the power of dynamic component-based pages for document creation and editing, but the performance benefits of static HTML for published use
text markup features that allow text pages (this page, for instance) to be converted to HTML on the fly, allowing fairly sophisticated content creation without any knowledge of HTML
a user model that supports view, edit, and publish privileges, and allows authorisation to be delegated for whole document subtrees without having to modify webserver configurations
written in Perl (Embperl + Embperl::Object), allowing templates and (permitted) pages to embed and execute arbitrary perl code
filesystem-based (no database required), allowing content to be change-controlled using standard source management tools (CVS and alternatives)

Installation

Installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file.

Requirements

ewok requires:

a Unix-based Apache (developed on Linux) with mod_perl support
currently, root access (or, minimally, write access to the apache configuration files)
apache authentication on ewok staging directories (any basic-authentication-compatible apache module should work)
the following perl modules installed:
- HTML::Embperl (1.3.x), OR Embperl 2.x
- URI::Escape
- File::DirSync
- Config::Directory
- HTML::Breadcrumbs

Homepage and Further Info

The ewok homepage is located at http://www.openfusion.com.au/labs/ewok/ - the latest release will always be available there.

Please send feedback, comments, and bug reports to ewok@openfusion.com.au.

Credits

ewok is written by Gavin Carr <gavin@openfusion.com.au> .

Portions of ewok were written while employed by Open Telecommunications Ltd. (Australia). OT have kindly disclaimed all copyright interest, allowing ewok to be placed under an open source licence.

Chunks of the documentation are the work of Jane Burren (http://www.burren.cx/jane), wordsmith-for-hire, philosopher and general web guru - thanks Y.

ewok is built on top of Gerald Richter's excellent and highly recommended Embedded Perl framework - see http://perl.apache.org/embperl/.

Licence

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details, available with this distribution in the COPYING file.