mbajurMay 29, 2025

To all #ruby and #rubyonrails folks: I recently forked ComfrotableMexicanSofa CMS and fully moved it to #turbo and all other goodies to be able to use it for my personal portfolio website. I'm planning a lot of features and improvements (including ActivityPub support) so stay tuned for more!

I'm gonna name it Comfy CMS and you can follow it here: https://github.com/mbajur/comfy

Let me know if you have any questions or ideas!

GitHub - mbajur/comfy: Comfortable Media Surfer is a powerful Ruby on Rails 7.0+ CMS (Content Management System) Engine

Comfortable Media Surfer is a powerful Ruby on Rails 7.0+ CMS (Content Management System) Engine - mbajur/comfy

GitHub
Show threadalexanderadamMay 30, 2025
@mbajur ComfortableMexicanSofa never convinced me and I always returned to @alchemy_cms to be honest 😂
Show threadmbajurMay 30, 2025
@alexanderadam yeah i know what you mean, for me though is that i always come back from alchemy to plain rails 😅 i gave cmsofa a proper try recently and discovered it’s actually a super capable yet simple tool that deserves some modern touch like turbo, importmaps etc
Show threadalexanderadamMay 30, 2025

@mbajur my problem is that the #Rails ecosystem already has a lot of simple #CMS.
#AlchemyCMS has features that my customers know from other professional CMS and therefore expect them to be included as well.

However, a #hotwire revamp for #alchemy would be pretty cool as well as the backend is functional but #hotwirejs would clearly be a modern addition.
Or a migration to #ActiveStorage from #dragonfly.

Show threadmbajurMay 30, 2025
@alexanderadam for a professional grade solutions, Alchemy is probably a way to go. For people with programming skills that juts wants to run a simple website - i don't think there is any better option than cmsofa. My personal requirements forces me to implement a lot of very specific backend features for my website (a photography portfolio with AP integration) and hacking around Alchemy would be just too much struggle for me :)
Show threadmbajurMay 30, 2025
@alexanderadam oh, and Alchemy could definitely use some refactoring and redesign but from what i recall - I didn't liked how author approached a guy who was proposing some really good redesign changes when they did a major redesign couple of years ago. No previous nor current design fits me well sadly which always pushes me off that project...not that cmsofa is better in this regard haha
Show threadTvD 🔊Jun 4, 2025
@mbajur @alexanderadam would be very much interested in what you dont like about the current UI/UX. Is it the colors?
Show threadmbajurJun 5, 2025

@tvdeyen It's very tough to pinpoint as i don't have it installed anywhere to click through but if you're interested in that, i can set it up ;)

I'm pretty sure that, just like @alexanderadam said, "backend looks dated, not terrible but not catchy either" - exactly that. That's a bigger writeup so i have to split that into separate toots. These are not ALL my points but major ones (and forgive if I'm spreading misinformation, it was a long time since i last used it):

Show threadmbajurJun 5, 2025

@tvdeyen 4. Backend JS extendability? I'm not sure how it's done right now in alchemy but when i forked comfy, i moved everything to importmaps which made it possible to register new JS modules from engines (or parent apps) - so the backend JS layer became easily extendable.

How is that part planned to be handled? I would also love to see stimulus being used with it's controllers and all the goodies

Show threadTvD 🔊
@mbajur @tvdeyen You can use Stimulus if you like, but we do not plan to use it. We like to be as close as web platform as possible and stimulus does not provide much in top of custom elements (WebComponents). Have a look at how we built most of Alchemy's UI with them and you will see why. It's amazing what you can achieve with modern JS.
Jun 7, 2025 at 6:39amopenvibe
Show threadTvD 🔊Jun 7, 2025

@mbajur @tvdeyen The problem with Stimulus is that it is soon-to-be-legacy tech. It won't survive long. The web browser will continue to work with vanilla JS. Stimulus won't (as all other JS frameworks). So, we will stay with the amazing tools the browser provides us today.

Give custom-elements a try. You would be amazed how great they are.

Show threadmbajurJun 7, 2025
@tvdeyen My problem with JS is that i never know what's currently the best/recommended way of implementing things (it's impossible to follow at times) so i tend to rely on libs i can delegate that dillema to. I wanted to get into custom elements some time ago but one dev told me it's the future, other dev told it's obsolete technology and that's how my usual experience with JS goes hah. But sure, your point makes sense.
Show threadTvD 🔊Jun 7, 2025

@mbajur @tvdeyen That are valid points and lots of people experience that JS fatigue. Me included. This IS actually the reason to NOT use any framework at all.

Vanilla JS can always be trusted on. So instead of learning Framework X, just learn the platform. It will always work.