dotCMS

dotCMS is a developer's sandbox with lots of toys in it. It has a lot of built-in features and the custom content types and flexibility. There has been nothing we've wanted to do that we could not do using dotCMS.

With great flexibility comes great complexity. There are examples of how to do everything, but in the end you have to build out your own stuff. It doesn't theme, it doesn't one-click upgrade. You have to have a competent development wrapped around it.

This is an ideal CMS for an enterprise environment that needs a product that is flexible, highly customizable and reasonably priced.

There are bugs at times that are identified and either resolved via a hotfix or held for resolution in the next iteration. I have received emails saying that a bug was identified and proactively already fixed. However, other times I notice an issue that is documented as a feature yet doesn't work and you must wait until the next iteration is released. One example is an automatic sitemap generator tool. While the configuration of the module is in the documentation there are known reports that not all of the features work. Rather than prioritize it as a hotfix, it is idle until the next release. In the meantime, I have to defer to a third-party sitemap tool.

The ability to create widgets and place them in any container on the page allows for a ton of flexibility for pulling in and displaying content. The interface for content editors was generally easy enough for them to use effectively.

If you're not a developer who already knows the language, there's a long learning curve before you're able to code Velocity to do what you want. Also, some things that require little or no setup in other systems require customization. (Example: generating friendly URLs, which is automatic in something like Wordpress.) We also didn't like the strange URLs auto-generated for file assets. Permissions were buggy, partly because some of our files were so old ("legacy" assets).

dotCMS uses concepts familiar to the average computer user, such as files and folder, so it's easy for people who know nothing in particular about web development to add and maintain content.
Support is very courteous and responsive.

Not very developer-friendly: On the job, the main thing I do in dotCMS is write code for templates, detail pages, etc. I often end up copying and pasting code back and forth between dotCMS' interface and a text editor like Notepad++ because I find the built-in code editor fields too small. While dotCMS has WebDAV support, I have never been able to get it to work - and I've tried about a dozen times on a dozen different computers. The closest I've come to getting WebDAV to work is getting a list of all folders in the dotCMS installation -- but no files.