WebCMS: Concept and Prototype (Bachelor Thesis)
Services
Custom Software
Industries
Research and Development
Period
Juli 2014 - September 2014
As part of the bachelor thesis at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Applied Computer Science), a novel content management system was designed and prototypically implemented. The focus was on the architectural separation of model, view, and content — an approach that extends beyond the classic MVC pattern.
The starting point was a comparative analysis of the leading CMS solutions Typo3 and WordPress. Architectural weaknesses were identified: Typo3 relies on the proprietary configuration language TypoScript, WordPress mixes PHP logic into templates. Both systems offer limited capabilities for clean separation of presentation and content.
The WebCMS addresses these issues through the use of the RADFramework as backend infrastructure and a client-side binding architecture based on KnockoutJS. A generic data model enables flexible mapping of arbitrary content structures. UserTemplates define presentation exclusively through HTML annotations — without programming code or proprietary languages. The binding architecture dynamically links ViewModel representations with the view.
The implementation as a single-page application leverages the HTML5 History API for automatic deep-linking and efficient caching. Named regions within views enable dynamic composition of page layouts. The functional prototype demonstrates the practical feasibility of the theoretical concepts and identifies approaches for further development — including extraction of the binding architecture as a standalone development environment.
Credits
Technologies