Feedback on CMS that auto-generates from EF Core

[bassieee]

Hope it's ok to post this here. I'm looking for feedback on a CMS we have built.

See it here: Cloudy CMS for .NET Core, C#, and EF Core

The main feature is that this CMS automates creation of a graphical admin interface based on your EF Core models.
No custom API or anything to write your models to or to integrate with. It's all based on native EF Core functionality.

What do you think? Would you use this?

I know it's still quite MVP. Looking for some community feedback on if you see the potential or new features we should focus on first.

Thanks in advance if you have any thoughts to share!
Again apologies if posts like these are against guidelines.

 

[cjard]

I might use it for internal, but customer facing stuff will probably always require some aspect of custom behavior for all but the least demanding customers

 

[bassieee]

I might use it for internal, but customer facing stuff will probably always require some aspect of custom behavior for all but the least demanding customers

Thanks for your response and interesting, do you mind elaborating on what you mean by custom behaviour?

 

[cjard]

Every UI I've ever written has been more than just "a form that accepts data in the exact same type as it is stored"..

..but what you have would be great for a trained person to load data; it's kinda like giving them SQL Server Management Studio and telling them to edit the data into the tables directly - something I'd have a dev do not problem, but maybe not a regular user

probably what you'll end up doing is adding annotations capability onto the data model so the Ui can do ever more complex things like validations and maybe even crossing the line into things like styling and then in some senses you'll be writing a whole new language, kinda like how Html evolved..

 

[Skydiver]

To add on to what @cjard said, I as an admin don't want to be entering the "content" for a CMS. I want my content producers or users to be putting in that content. In fact, as an admin, I don't really care about the underlying data model. I just care about making sure that system is running, and that I can perform back-ups, restores, and patching. Any underlying data model changes should be handled as upgrade, and that should go smoothly at the click of a button or a simple command line. And if there is an issue after an upgrade, a rollback should be just as simple -- no need to fiddle with restoring backups.

I think you need to think more about the different personas using your system: admin, content producer, content consumers, custom behavior programmer. Right now it feels like you are lumping together the admin, content producers, and custom behavior programmer as a single persona.

 

[bassieee]

Every UI I've ever written has been more than just "a form that accepts data in the exact same type as it is stored"..

..but what you have would be great for a trained person to load data; it's kinda like giving them SQL Server Management Studio and telling them to edit the data into the tables directly - something I'd have a dev do not problem, but maybe not a regular user

probably what you'll end up doing is adding annotations capability onto the data model so the Ui can do ever more complex things like validations and maybe even crossing the line into things like styling and then in some senses you'll be writing a whole new language, kinda like how Html evolved..

Thanks a lot for your feedback! Really useful.

 

[bassieee]

To add on to what @cjard said, I as an admin don't want to be entering the "content" for a CMS. I want my content producers or users to be putting in that content. In fact, as an admin, I don't really care about the underlying data model. I just care about making sure that system is running, and that I can perform back-ups, restores, and patching. Any underlying data model changes should be handled as upgrade, and that should go smoothly at the click of a button or a simple command line. And if there is an issue after an upgrade, a rollback should be just as simple -- no need to fiddle with restoring backups.

I think you need to think more about the different personas using your system: admin, content producer, content consumers, custom behavior programmer. Right now it feels like you are lumping together the admin, content producers, and custom behavior programmer as a single persona.

Thanks for the great feedback. We are indeed kind of doing that