The Architecture of GLAMkit

GLAMkit is a next-generation Python CMS by the Interaction Consortium (IC), designed especially for the cultural sector. It has tools for dealing with complex events, collections, press releases, sponsors, and a institutional storytelling engine.

GLAMkit has publishing and workflow tools for teams of content professionals, and a powerful content framework, based on django-fluent. Everything is written in Python, using the Django framework.

Key features

GLAMkit has:

• complex repeating calendared events
• collection patterns: art, moving image, etc.
• a story-telling engine (e.g. rich ‘watch’, ‘read’, ‘listen’ articles)
• Patterns for hierarchical pages and collections of rich content models.
• Advanced publishing / preview / unpublishing controls
• Simple workflow controls
• Content plugins for working with rich text, images, embedded media, etc.
• Customisable site search using Elastic Search
• django-reversion compatible, allowing versioning of content
• press releases
• sponsors
• Customisable admin dashboard
• Docker-compatible project template supplied
• Batteries included: bower, LessCSS, Bootstrap
• Easily extensible with models, templates, plugins, etc.

GLAMkit is delivered as a Docker-compatible package, which means that it’s easy to share a consistent development environment across your team, or to deploy on any Docker-compatible web host, including top-tier cloud hosting services like AWS.

This section documents some of the architectural principles underpinning GLAMkit.

• Architectural conventions
  • Template contexts
  • ListableMixin
  • Portable apps
  • Naming Conventions
• Working with rich content
  • Rich content models
  • Content Plugins
  • ListableMixin
  • AbstractCollectedContent and AbstractListingPage
  • Publishing in GLAMkit
  • Workflow in GLAMkit
  • Page Trees and Django MPTT
  • Debugging tip - finding what view is used