Technical Guide

Magnolia CMS is an open-source Web Content Management System that focuses on providing an intuitive user experience in an enterprise-scale system. Its combination of ease-of-use and a flexible, standards-based Java architecture has attracted enterprise customers such as ING, JBoss.org, Johnson & Johnson, Lloyds TSB, Sony, Seat, Unilever and The US Department of Defense. Magnolia CMS is used by governments and Fortune 500 enterprises, and in more than 100 countries.

This Technical Guide walks you through architectural features that make Magnolia CMS suitable for versatile enterprise use are:

  • Java platform. Magnolia CMS is built on top of the Java Enterprise Edition platform. Java EE reduces the cost and complexity of developing multi-tier enterprise services. Java EE applications can be rapidly deployed and easily enhanced as the enterprise responds to competitive pressures. Java provides further benefits to enterprises such as standardization, availability of trained talent, and a solid marketplace for competing offers to drive innovation. Magnolia CMS is implemented as a Java EE web application. A typical web application consists of modules that can be other web applications, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) or application clients. In Magnolia CMS, nearly everything is a module. Even the AdminCentral, a content editor's view into the CMS, is a module. A Java EE application is a set of modules with some added glue that binds them together into a complete integrated application.
  • JCR standard. JCR stands for Content Repository API for Java. It is a specification for a Java platform API for accessing content repositories in a uniform manner. Repositories are used to store the content data and related meta data such as versioning information. 
  • Clustering by having multiple public instances. Magnolia CMS is distributed as two web-applications, one acting as the authoring instance and the other as the public environment. This has several benefits. It allows for better security by having one application inside your firewall and one outside. You can increase the number of public instances to guarantee high availability. Separate public instances can serve geographically targeted content or multiple languages.

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