PumaCMS

PumaCMS is a wikilike content management system developed over the course of several years for Creole West Productions. Why didn’t we just use something else? Basically, everything I ran across when evaluating other CMSs was way too bloated, and everything I ran across when evaluating other wikis just didn’t fit the bill. We just wanted a CMS that worked and was exceedingly easy to customize. Since the CMS would form the foundation of several of Creole West Productions’ core websites and products, it was reasonable to build a new CMS from scratch.

Recently, Creole West Productions has decided to release Puma to the rest of the world. We thought it was useful, and maybe someone else out there will too. Having spent most of its life as internal software, there’s not much documentation on how to use it and how to make it work for you. This blog aims to fix that situation with a series of articles about how to customize Puma for your own nefarious purposes, as well as the nitty-gritty details of administering a Puma website, and documenting some of the more important internal features of Puma along the way.

This blog is also a commentary on the nature of Puma and the design patterns that make it tick. It’s an case study in rapid development touching on REST, MVC, object mappers, artificial intelligence (yes, there’s some of that in Puma), and a million other little gems of interest to developers.

I hope you enjoy the content!