This should probably be retitled; after playing with it for a bit BrowserCMS is really nothing like Drupal, nor is it meant to be a Drupal clone. Instead, it's a powerful general-purpose CMS that will easily manage both static and dynamic content. If you've looked at Radiant but thought it was too simple, take a look at this.<p>Grab the source at <a href="http://github.com/browsermedia/browsercms" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/browsermedia/browsercms</a>.
Most web design shops which build websites for clients will end up using some form of Content Management System, to allow those clients to maintain the site after launch. BrowserCMS is a solution to our firm's problem, which is wanting the productivity of Rails for building custom websites, but giving clients Web CMS tools to maintain the site after launch.<p>I'm the product manager for BrowserCMS, so hopefully I can shed some light on the 'whys' behind the project. It is certainly not to clone Drupal in Rails. Drupal is mentioned in the presentation because many developers are familiar with it, so the enviable first question I hear is 'How is BrowserCMS like Drupal?'.<p>Our intent with BrowserCMS is to provide a client friendly CMS. Making a site maintainable and understandable by non-technical users is the primary goal of the CMS. We also want to allow Rails developers to be able to customize sites. We do have a module system (different than Drupal's), which allows developers to build custom modules (News, Events Calendars, Blog, etc). The dynamic content can be placed by non-technical users on pages. Obviously, it's a new project though (still in Beta), so we are about ~4500 modules behind Drupal here.<p>Anyway, if folks have more questions, our mailing list is at <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/browsercms" rel="nofollow">http://groups.google.com/group/browsercms</a>
It will take me some time to watch this. Anyone able to summarize right now why this thing is like Drupal?<p>("It's a CMS" is not enough. The word "CMS" has many meanings. And Drupal is arguably a CMS, but it is a specific <i>flavor</i> of CMS. For example: Does BrowseCMS have a module system reminiscent of Drupal's?)
"Drupal works, lets rewrite it in Rails." Other than serving as a thought experiment on a grand scale where is the perceived benefit of trying to implement the feature set of an existing CMS in a slower language? Is this an example of language preference taking to an extreme or are there concrete benefits to this approach?