Is there a standard format for site structure?

Question

Is there a standard format for site structure? Using this would be for exporting and importing into a CMS or framework for defining URLs, content, metadata for a website. The goal would be something agnostic.

JSON, YAML, XML, whatever. Maybe something like:

{ 'baseurl': 'http://example.com', 'site': [ {'slug': '/', 'title': 'ExampleCo. Inc.', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/about', 'title': 'About Our Company', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/services', 'title': 'Our Services', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/products', 'title': 'Products', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/products/purchase', 'title': 'Purchase Products Now', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/products/downloads', 'title': 'Downloads', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'}, {'slug': '/contact', 'title': 'Contact Us', 'content': 'Lorem ipsum\n\nEtc'} ] } 

I believe that this will allow you to quickly fill out a content management system or infrastructure using the general navigation structure of the site.

Is there something similar?

Answer 1

I don’t know if it really answers your question, but there is a standard called CMIS, which is basically a specification for synchronizing and exchanging content between CMS. Alfresco, KnowledgeTree and many other commercial CMSs support it. Drupal also supports it through the Contrib module. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services

The spectrum has just been ratified less than a year ago, I think.

Answer 2

There is a standard industry standard for exchanging data / interop for WCMS (trying to find a link), however IMO it will not take off. Regardless, it is guaranteed that any data that you are currently thinking of migrating will now be overpriced by the time the format can occur, so it’s best for you to decide which problem solves your problem.

Answer 3

I came across a zen tool that does something similar to what you are describing.

As for the existing standard, no. CMS are different animals than layout / content specification languages, which is XHTML / CSS.

As for loading content into the CMS, most of them have an XMLRPC interface, so you can just use it.

Answer 4

Almost any CMS has a database interface, so I assume that the SQL dump will be pretty close to the general format. You can then write several tools to map table and column names and data types between different CMS systems. If you used postgres, you could even create views that mimic the structure of various CMS systems without actually modifying any data. Of course, a trick such as CSV and XML, the format is not so much a problem as the data structure.