Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason

Appendix D. Content Management with Bricolage

This appendix was kindly written for this book by David Wheeler, Bricolage Maintainer, [e-mail].

As your site grows, the amount of content to be managed grows. At some point — particularly if you’re part of a large organization with a lot of pages on its site — the amount of content that needs to be continually updated becomes unwieldy. Most sites start out with one or two people doing everything manually in a text editor and then FTPing the files to the web server. As the demands on the site grow, savvy site operators discover and deploy flexible templating systems such as Mason to ease the demands of site management.

However, for all its flexibility and power, Mason still requires manual updates to its files. By using Mason, you may reduce the number of files you have to edit every time your marketing department wants to change its message from “adaptively monetizing holistic market-driven systems” to “utilizing proactive meta-services,”^[31] but wouldn’t it be nice if the marketing department could make those changes itself, without having to bother you? And wouldn’t it be helpful if the interface for making those changes was simple enough for every user in your organization to comprehend and use?

Content management systems (CMSs) endeavor (or at least claim) to respond to such wishes. The CMS market is a packed one, with entries from startups to established industry players. But if you’re reading this book, it’s safe to assume ...