Recommendations to others considering Cockpit CMS:
Talk to your developers, to ensure they are O.K. using a system which requires them to supply their own front-end. Cockpit only manages data, thus the displaying of data is up to the developer. I use VueJS (http://vuejs.org/) to expedite this process. Vue is a view-model system for client-side JavaScript, which means it will take data (in this case, from Cockpit) and update HTML elements on the fly, automatically. This creates a seamless AJAX-style system that I think most JavaScript developers will understand. Angular and KnockOut.js can do many of the same things, but to reiterate, Cockpit does not have any requirements for the front-end, Cockpit will work equally well with plain old JavaScript, though with more work on the developers end for HTTP requests and DOM updating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What problems is Cockpit CMS solving and how is that benefiting you?
Cockpit saves me time when developing a website which requires a small amount of managed content. Normally, this content is a gallery or small blog. Cockpit is simply "imported" in some way (either through a server-side PHP API, a client-side Javascript API, or a simple HTTP API) into any project. I prefer to use the Javascript API, which is as simple as including:
in a webpage, after placing the self-contained PHP scripts into a publicly accessible folder. That's it. The front-end can be accessed by navigating to "yourwebsite.com/admin". Here, you can set up galleries and "collections" (content with multiple entries, think blog posts or streams in other CMS's) which can be accessed by using the Javascript API:
Cockpit.request('/collections/get/collection-name-here').success(function( data ){
console.log( data )
});
In this case, the "data" variable contains all the information the user has entered using the CMS for that collection, and most web developers will know exactly how to continue from this point using their own technologies, that they are familiar with. Keep in mind, Cockpit does not provide any front-end styling like Wordpress or Drupal will, Cockpit is simply an easy way to collect and manage data from a registered set of users. Cockpit only gives the data to developers, letting them work how they want to, instead of Wordpress (for example) forcing developers to play by their rules. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
