Case Study: Refinery CMS

If at first you succeed, try, try again.

Business goals
We developed our original Ruby on Rails content management system (CMS) back in 2004 because we couldn't find a good alternative. It was praised for ease of use but it wasn't easily extendable. So we set out to create a modular version which we released to the open source community in mid-2009. This is our strategy to make it better and give something back.

User objectives
Having seen our first generation CMS in action, we listened to and learned from real live users. They tend to repeat a set of common tasks and want them to be as easy as possible. At the same time, their needs are unique so they expect to use the special functions their site requires. 

Our approach
Refinery CMS is based on plug-in modules that extend the functionality according to the specific needs of each client. Because clients don't get what they don't need, their CMS isn't bloated with a lot of useless features. Refinery embraces conventions used in Rails, allowing any Rails programmer to leverage existing knowledge to get up and running quickly.

The application is designed to:

  • Make content management as easy as possible. 
    Focus on the primary needs of small business websites  
  • Minimize end-user training
    Most non-technical users can get started within a few minutes
  • Provide extensions by creating Rails style engines.
    Add only those functions that are going to be needed by the end users
  • Continually improve as an open source solution.
    Hundreds of developers are using Refinery and their contributions make it better all the time.

Results
Refinery CMS was released as open source mid-2009. On August 29, 2010, two days after Rails 3 was released, Refinery announced full Rails 3 support (with the contributions of a thriving developer community). In December 2010 it became the most popular Rails CMS, according to the folks at Ruby Toolbox.

More about Refinery CMS 

What they're saying

"I just wanted to thank the Refinery CMS team for your clever work and for making this project open source! Refinery will save me countless hours and effort."

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