Content Management systems are all the rave at the moment with so many people publishing online. We all have our preferences and it’s no secret where my allegiance is.

I recently worked on some interface design work for Free Software Unit at UWC (University of the Western Cape) and was introduced to Chisimba, a rapid web application development platform with content management and social networking capabilities which will put many of the systems out there to shame.

Chisimba is a Web 2.0 enabled rapid application development framework for creating web applications that are platform independent, browser independent, XHTML compliant, and can use a number of common databases. The framework is written in PHP5 using the model-view-controller paradigm, implemented via a modular architecture. Chisimba has an API that can be used by other applications over the Web, and it is Free Software licensed under the GNU GPL.

The word "Chisimba" is the Chichewa (Malawi) word for the framework used to build a traditional African house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisimba

Problem is not many people have heard of it, and, like many other open source developments, it suffers from a serious lack of wider community involvement. I think one of the problems with many programmer driven initiatives is the lack of communication skills in dealing with the non-programming or user community.

The Chisimba platform is one of many AVOIR(African Virtual Open Initiatives & Resources) projects. Some of the 100+ functional features included in the system…

"can be used to create a Content Management System, a Web 2.0 enabled e-learning platform, a group-based collaboration platform, a blogging system that allows posting from mobile phones, and many other applications."

The Chisimba platform was initiated by Professor Derek Keats FSIU at UWC and the core development is being driven by Paul Scott also based at UWC.

It’s great to see home grown developments of this nature in the web space. I’m watching this one with keen interest and hope to test it out for a social project soon with the help of the FSIU guys, if they can spare some time for installation on my own domain.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.