Daizu's lack of UI

Daizu CMS doesn't yet have a user interface. I wanted to concentrate first on getting the fundamentals of publishing content right, but some kind of web interface can be added later. I think a lot of other web publishing software has suffered from a too-early focus on the design of the user interface. I know it's important, but this focus can lead to less flexibility and more brokenness in the long run.

The only user interface that Daizu does have currently is the daizu program, which is used to trigger operations like updating working copies and publishing content.

Fortunately, because Daizu gets its content from a Subversion repository, you can just check out a normal Subversion working copy from that and edit content there with your favourite text editor. This is one reason why Daizu isn't ready for use by non-technical people, but anyone who knows how to write XHTML content (or POD, or whatever format you provide a plugin for), and how to use the svn client and a text editor, should have no problem.

The main problem with this approach is that you have to provide metadata, like titles and descriptions of articles, by setting Subversion properties. There's no real reason why you can't, but it's a bit inconvenient.

See the UI to-do list for information about what I'm planning to do about this limitation.