> >

Enhancement Details

367

Site Versioning and Publishing Workflow

Content Versioning and Workflow Ever make a change to content on your web site and right after saving wish you could reverse the change easily? It would be very practical for web site content authors to have the ability to make content changes with versioning and workflow automatically in place. This would allow for such actions as rollback, annotation, change logging, etc...

Problem:
DNN offers a very rich architecture but lacks the ability to introduce publishing workflow and versioning of content.

Rationale:
From a content authors standpoint the convenience and security in having this ability would be a very practical feature. Perhaps just as important on an enterprise level collaborating authors demand this. Most enterprise level CMS include this feature and in order for DNN to compete it should also.

Solution:
Due to the overall structure of the DNN platform this is a difficult task. I propose that DNN start one module at a time. Specifically the HTML/Text module. This is the module most often used on sites.

Impact:

Risk:

Created: 5/30/2007 12:05:24 AM by Chris Chodnicki
Scheduled For Version: 05.01.00
Delivered In Version: 05.01.00

Return

Comments

You Must Be Logged In To Add A Comment

Sonny McKnire
4/6/2010 11:48:33 AM

Notifications would be a huge improvement. Right now, for a content admin to go review all of their content looking for pages that should be approved for content is cumbersome. If it had a review page, or some sort of notification that there are items to be review, it would be perfect.

Michael Caines
5/8/2009 9:06:43 AM

Apparently, it's slated for release with 5.1...

The only catch...you'll have to pay $2000/yr for it.

Robert Collins
2/26/2009 4:21:39 PM

I personally believe this is the most needed/important enhancement in the list of enhancements for DNN to be accepted as an Enterprise Solution. I am very surprised that this is not yet implemented and part of the core. This feature is by far the most requested business feature in the list. It has been requested by vast numbers of users, over many years. I would REALLY like to see this included soon.

Fabrice
2/23/2009 9:46:08 PM

This feature would be very beneficial especially if implemented through a public interface, so that third party module could implement it consistently throughout the platform.

Joseph Sak
2/19/2008 3:28:43 PM

There is a module for this: Content Manager. It works really well, but would be great as a built-in feature

Steinar Svendsen
1/27/2008 5:07:21 PM

Content versioning is not important in DNN. I think most of the users would prefer using professional document management systems (do a wiki), especially in relation with content localization. At worst, this is a job for the module vendors. Going down this road would create too much work and follow-up, hours that could be spent on more important issues.

sprog
1/24/2008 8:46:29 AM

This is a great idea, but I would propose further from this the abiliity to administer versions. My users cannot always be trusted to directly publish. What if they could create a version, and that version could be approved? Then a change would also require approval?

Simon Annicchiarico
1/14/2008 6:49:55 AM

Workflow would be an invaluable addition to DNN's capabilities at both the content and the page level. Not having it is seriously restricting our ability to recommend the solution and seem credible against our competitors. Any ideas when this might be possible? Any solutions that do this at the page level? We have tried http://www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=5143 which works well for HTML content but what about something at the page level? Thanks.

Patrick van Eechoud
12/17/2007 9:44:55 AM

Does anyone knows if there are any plans / actions taken by the coreteam to include this in the DNN framework? Lack of versioning-abilty is a big issue for our customers not to choose for DNN and that is a pitty!

Grahame Horner
12/7/2007 3:27:34 PM

I agree that a versioning addin the DNN would be a cool feature; at the simplest level, we could and an update trigger to the tables that hold content the trigger could copy the content to an archive table with a datetime stamp. A new module could be developed to allow the rollback of content.

Mike Palmer
10/31/2007 10:47:52 AM

There is no doubt that this would make DNN a very strong contender for large corporations and publishing houses that need to have the safety of publishing control systems.

I am currently trying to put together a content control system that works in tandem with localisation, and finding it very difficult to come up with a robust solution.

Benjamin Hermann
8/3/2007 11:36:28 AM

we developed a free module (for text/ html). it's open source ... and based on the original text/html modul. it's really not that hard to implement such functions. find the module on www.effority.net

Stewart Walker
7/18/2007 3:50:34 AM

This is the one thing that every customer asks for in a CMS. The DNN Core Team would be doing an imense service to everyone if this was included in a release in the near future.

Richard Dorman
6/28/2007 7:29:21 AM

This is one area where DNN fails to compete with comparable open source and commercial CMSs such as Joomla or SharePoint. Implementing this feature genericaly across all modules would certainly make DNN a more attractive option for enterprise solutions where version control and workflow are must haves. Even a simple publish/approve model is desperately needed in DNN (Text/HTML specifically).

Ben Medlin
6/20/2007 9:43:45 AM

These features would definitely take DNN to the next level. WE MUST HAVE THESE!!!!!!

Ben J
6/10/2007 7:50:37 PM

Adding content versioning (ability to retain past X versions) and update workflow (different areas of site can be configured to require approval to publish new pages/modules/changes to) would take DNN to the next league.

This is crucial CMS functionality in our view. Currently, several commercial options exist, including "Engage: Publish" and "InvenManager.com's ContentManager". The problem is that:

a) these add-ons are expensive ($495 for Engage),

b) they have restrictive licences, so the resulting solution is no longer Open Source,

c) 3rd party add-ons tend to quickly become out of date (e.g., we bought ContentManager 6 months ago, it doesn't seem to kept up to date with new features such as inline editing).

Fingers crossed for support to be added as soon as possible! Perhaps a deal could be struck with one of the above vendors?

Ben Johnson

Mark Gordon
6/5/2007 2:26:54 PM

This type of functionality is critical for me in rolling this CMS out to my organization and teaching people how to use it. Our current classic ASP CMS has versioning, rollback and an easy to use Authorization feature with comments when an update or new page is "rejected". I thought this product had it when I did a search for it under cmsmatrix.org website. :-(

It would be very welcome indeed.

trench
6/2/2007 12:31:34 AM

This is a critical requirement, that if satisfied, would take DNN to a whole new level. I also agree that it is probably too broad and needs to be broken into versioning and workflow. Workflow is a specific animal that is incredibly complex.

Ian Lackey
5/31/2007 4:30:32 PM

With pluggable WF workflows... ;)
And allow approve / reject for all changes including page management (add, edit, delete etc.)

Mark
5/30/2007 12:22:37 PM

It would be nice if whatever solution you start working on would be a framework that custom module developers could leverage to store data snapshots for their own modules.

Chris Chodnicki
5/30/2007 11:57:58 AM

Brad

Good comments and yes that is a great product. My point is not specific to the HTML module. Rather any module should have versioning and workflow.

In an ideal world this would be a DNN system level cross module ability agnostic of the module itself (going totally Blue Sky). The only way to currently accomplish this system wide is currently via Database methods (Backup/Restore). This is not a realistic or practical approach to the problem. So if DNN content is mainly module oriented it must be attacked at this level and start one module at a time. Why not start with the HTML module that is part of the core and not force a purchase of a module for such critical functionality?

Brad Schafer
5/30/2007 11:38:39 AM

This functionality is a key reason that some of my clients love the Speerio HTML editor. The HTML/Text module is perhaps the most prevelant module installed, and the most likely to have content changes (and changes that require rollback).

You might consider breaking this into seperate items... Versioning and Workflow. As workflow could require a bit more thought than the 'snapshots' taken by a versioning method.

Hosted by MaximumASP