Refinery CMS is something we've recently stumbled across at work. I'm going to explain why we have taken to it like a duck to water.

In the main we build web applications, not websites. The problem is occasionally the former requires the latter. Using Ruby on Rails I have been able to work on a vast array of different, interesting, simple, complex you name it web applications; but there has always been this niggle that the CMS part is missing. There are lots of Rails CMS alternatives out there but we've never really been hooked by one for some reason or another. Rails being Rails means with a little time, custom CMS functionality has been -chucked- built into some projects, everyone knows you can write a blog in 15 minutes with rails, right!?

The problem with that approach is the re-invention of the wheel, plus that blog or pages engine written in 15 minutes doesn't touch that stable, fully tested feature rich one a team of programmers have been working on for years.

What I love about Refinery CMS is that it's really geared towards the end user, i.e. to add content like pages, news articles, images etc the client doesn't need to be a programmer and certainly doesn't need to learn any template language. For them the WYSIWYG editor is simple and offers plenty of power. Don't get me wrong, you will need a developer to get everything up and running, unless your client is very technical minded. Once setup though it's extremely easy for the user to take over. Depending on the client's ability, understanding and your trust you can offer a fair bit of control over to what they can do, such as deleting that core page contact us or messing around with other settings.

As much as I love the end user I'll be honest, how difficult my life becomes is pretty important too, after all time is money. This is where Refinery CMS wins hands down for me. In principle it's just rails app. In fact it's just a rails app with many engines as its core. The beauty of this is that you can do whatever you like to it with ease. The architecture allows you to add your own functionality in the root of the application or through additional plugins. There is even a simple plugin generator to make adding new ones a breeze.

Since working in Rails I've always wanted to get involved with an open source project but have honestly been a little worried I wouldn't have much to offer. Refinery has helped me get over that fear, quite quickly in fact. The core team are very helpful but do rightfully ensure the project upholds their vision.

It's not yet at its first release so things are changing and improving all the time, but it's not hard to follow and upgrade. Tests are being added all the time which will improve the stability in the long run. The plugin list is growing, we've added our own, a simple way for handling testimonials, we're also working on one for vacancies. Looking at the github network you can see others are helping with i18n and bringing it all up to rails 3.

Refinery continues to help us tackle some of our projects, it's also improved my knowledge and finally got me contributing back to open source. If you're looking for a Ruby on Rails based CMS, I would highly recommend you check it out!