Case Study: Refinery Web Content Management System

6 years of refinement and 50 websites later we come to a solution we start with every time - our own open source content manager called RefineryCMS.

Business goals
We developed our original Ruby on Rails content management system (CMS) back in 2003 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 (rebranded as Refinery CMS) and release it to the open source community. 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 over 50 clients. 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 and focused just on what they need.

The application is designed to:

• Make content management as easy as possible. 
  Focus on the primary needs of small business websites  

• Provide extensions to meet each client's needs.
  Add only those functions that are going to be useful

• Continually improve as an open source solution.
  Any developer can contribute to make Refinery better

Results
RefineryCMS has now been released as an open source project. Take a look at it at www.refinerycms.com or play around with the demo at demo.refinerycms.com. Developers can find the GitHub repository at www.refinerycms.org.