Meet Wagtail, Torchbox's new CMS
Big news, Torchbox have released a brand new, open source Content Management System, Wagtail.
Who is it aimed at?
Wagtail is a powerful, well featured content management system, built on the popular, respected Django framework. It can power sites of any size, but it'll be particularly effective for medium to large sites with sophisticated content management requirements. Wagtail has a fantastic user interface that makes it easy and enjoyable to publish great content.
Where has it come from?
We developed Wagtail with the Royal College of Art for their new website, with the aim of releasing it as an open source project. The RCA site was launched last year and now has over 5000 pages and 8000 images in its Wagtail CMS. You can watch a video case study about the RCA implementation.
How do you feel about it?
We've been building content managed sites for 14 years. Wagtail takes the best CMS concepts, and is built using the latest web development practices. It may not yet have the wealth of plugins of some CMSs, but it's a pleasure to extend. We love it and we are already seeing the benefits for developers and editors. The user experience is second to none.
How it's taking off?
So far, so good. We've done a very limited, developer-focused launch: a new Django conference in Cardiff and a story on Hacker News. And, in just two weeks we have:
- 1000 stars on Github
- other agencies interested in implementing it (watch this space)
- pull requests from community contributors outside of Torchbox
- people saying nice things about it
- hosting companies supporting it
- almost 70% test coverage
- volunteers adding translations for the admin interface, so German and Greek editors can use it
And, look out for the relaunch of Torchbox.com on Wagtail in the next couple of weeks.
Are you still doing Drupal?
Yes. We continue to build and support Drupal sites for some fantastic organisations. Many organisations have implemented Drupal, but for those that want to look at other options, you may well find that Wagtail is the right one.