The Blue Bucket Project: #NoCMS

The Blue Bucket Project aims to show that the existing pattern used to build web content management systems is broken, or at least, that the most common publishing use cases are better served by a different implementation pattern. My contention is that traditional, vertically-integrated content management systems are an anti-pattern for web publishing, and are as much hindrance as help to publishing operations at many scales.

If new data storage technologies like document stores and column stores contrast themselves with traditional patterns using the term NoSQL, then Blue Bucket could reasonably apply to itself the term NoCMS.

The Blue Bucket Project finds its inspiration at the confluence of the philosophies of open source software and the Indieweb, the techniques of progressive enhancement, static site generation, and cloud computing and architecture inspired by REST and systems theory.

Enough buzzwords?

Here are some desired properties of the system:

• Portability is paramount. Users must be able to extract their content at any time and abandon the software without losing any data.
• Scalability goes in both directions. The system must aim to perform well at very small scale as well as very large scale.
• Composability is valuable. The system should be interoperable with existing systems, preserving user choice of tools.

Here are some down-to-earth principles used in Blue Bucket's design:

• Web standards are the instruction manual.
• Cloud services are the magic sauce. Hardware and software are anti-patterns. Minimize use of infrastructure and custom code.
• Small pieces, loosely joined, are better than big, complex tools.
• The file system is the canonical repository. Every artifact of the site is stored in, or derived from, flat files.
• Generating assets at publish time is almost always better than at request time.

I (Vince) put the Blue Bucket Project together to prove out some design principles I have developed over the course of my career implementing content management systems. The project has two parts which I am developing in parallel: the software used to implement the Blue Bucket publishing system, and the content of the web site that documents the processes and technologies used to build it. Although I'm not in academia, I think of this project as my master's thesis.

Copyright and License

Software in the Blue Bucket Project is Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use it except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Non-software content in the Blue Bucket Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.