semantic web

Open Source Semantics

Although I grew from an older school of technology (early 1990’s), I still sometimes struggle to keep focus on fundamental concepts in design. I am management, though I still like to get stuck into the nuts and bolts, as 1. I like it, and 2. I believe that I should understand the technology. The crux of semantic approach is to treat data and design as seperate entities, but in the course of designing this blog, it was easy to forget. The proliferation of themes/plugins means that it is easy to bloat up your blog very quickly. I discovered a few themes, which not only style, but were designed to take over wordpress core components. Nothing inherently wrong with this, but if you have to go that far to customise, then maybe Wordpress isnt the solution for your site …. this is a historical problem software problem, when buying software off-the-shelf. It seems even when software is free, the same challenge presents itself - how much time can we allocate to customisation before we realise if this is, or isn’t, the software for us.

Which brings me neatly to my point, and a bugbear for QA everywhere - open source-re-engineering projects need requirements, and to have them done thoroughly. Though open source software is clearly the way forward, the approach to its adoption is still old-fashioned, relying on the “sell”.  Just because something is free, it doesnt mean its sales pitch is honest - there is a lot of competiveness in open source software, because the business model and revenue generation is now clearer. Wordpress is not the best technically, but is more a victim of its own success, trying to please everyone. I chose Wordpress becuase of its large community, and inherent support. The proliferation of themes, some genius, most amateur, is a guage how huge this open source blog tool has become.

How can we keep control? This sort of misses the point maybe, but a company/individual must set a framework which is built around their requirements. Content management is a key component of your overall web application, so keep that in mind when selecting open source CMS applications, i.e. a good content management system is key to successful website management - not themes not plugins. I still forget this lesson, and it takes daily reminders to keep focus on data and efficency in manipulating that data.