I have been researching open source Java Content Management Systems (CMS) for quite a while and this week just started dabbling with Apache Lenya which is based on Apache Cocoon. Initially I was primarily interested in Lenya which is a 100% Java software. The more I learned about the underlying Cocoon technology I was just blown away. Apache Cocoon is a web development framework built around the concepts of separation of concerns and component-based web development. It sort of acts like "web glue" based on XML, XSL, and XSLT. Cocoon concepts are not for the faint at heart as the Lenya developers mention in their documentation.
Lenya has some nice built-in WYSIWIG editors. The best ones that Lenya uses are Kupu, and BitFlux Editor (BXE). There are a few more editors built-in for editing raw HTML and forms.
Some other open source CMS software I was looking at was OpenCMS which is database driven designed for MySQL or Oracle. This one is another 100% Java software looks quite impressive. I have yet to evaluate OpenCMS. The documentation is decent. It is backed by a private company, Alkacon Software. There are some licensing concerns with OpenCMS.
Lenya is currently at version 1.2.4 and version 1.4 is under heavy development according to their website. There are still some rough edges in Lenya which are being addressed. Using Lenya 1.2.4 today requires that you are comfortable with XML and understand some of the Cocoon concepts.
I plan to continue evaluating and researching Apache Lenya and Cocoon. As all the other Apache Software Foundation projects have evolved, I have faith the ASF will get it right and make Lenya/Cocoon quite an impressive product in version 1.4 and beyond.
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