Content management systems (CMSs) such as Joomla and WordPress dominate today’s web. Enabled by standardized extensions, administrators can build powerful web applications for diverse customer demands. However, developing CMS extensions requires sophisticated technical knowledge, and the complex code structure of an extension gives rise to errors during typical development and migration scenarios. Model-driven development (MDD) seems to be a promising paradigm to address these challenges; however, it has not found adoption in the CMS domain yet. Systematic evidence of the benefit of applying MDD in this domain could facilitate its adoption; however, an empirical investigation of this benefit is currently lacking. In this paper, we present a mixed-method empirical investigation of applying MDD in the CMS domain, based on an interview suite, a controlled experiment, a field experiment, and case studies. During the experiments, we used JooMDD, an MDD infrastructure instantiation for CMS extensions. This infrastructure, which is also presented in this work, consists of a DSL with model editors, code generators, and reverse engineering facilities. We consider three scenarios of developing new (both independent and dependent) CMS extensions and of migrating existing ones to a new major platform version. The experienced developers in our interviews acknowledge the relevance of these scenarios and report on experiences that render them suitable candidates for a successful application of MDD. We found a particularly high relevance of the migration scenario. Our experiments largely confirm the potentials and limits of MDD as identified for other domains. In particular, we found a productivity increase up to factor 11.7 and a quality increase up to factor 2.4 during the development of CMS extensions. Furthermore, our observations highlight the importance of good tooling that seamlessly integrates with already used tool environments and processes.

Content management systems (CMSs) such as Joomla and WordPress dominate today’s web. Enabled by standardized extensions, administrators can build powerful web applications for diverse customer demands. However, developing CMS extensions requires sophisticated technical knowledge, and the complex code structure of an extension gives rise to errors during typical development and migration scenarios. Model-driven development (MDD) seems to be a promising paradigm to address these challenges; however, it has not found adoption in the CMS domain yet. Systematic evidence of the benefit of applying MDD in this domain could facilitate its adoption; however, an empirical investigation of this benefit is currently lacking. In this paper, we present a mixed-method empirical investigation of applying MDD in the CMS domain, based on an interview suite, a controlled experiment, a field experiment, and case studies. During the experiments, we used JooMDD, an MDD infrastructure instantiation for CMS extensions. This infrastructure, which is also presented in this work, consists of a DSL with model editors, code generators, and reverse engineering facilities. We consider three scenarios of developing new (both independent and dependent) CMS extensions and of migrating existing ones to a new major platform version. The experienced developers in our interviews acknowledge the relevance of these scenarios and report on experiences that render them suitable candidates for a successful application of MDD. We found a particularly high relevance of the migration scenario. Our experiments largely confirm the potentials and limits of MDD as identified for other domains. In particular, we found a productivity increase up to factor 11.7 and a quality increase up to factor 2.4 during the development of CMS extensions. Furthermore, our observations highlight the importance of good tooling that seamlessly integrates with already used tool environments and processes.

Content Management Systems (CMSs) such as Joomla and WordPress dominate today's web. Enabled by standardized extensions, administrators can build powerful web applications for diverse customer demands. However, developing CMS extensions requires sophisticated technical knowledge, and the highly schematic code structure of an extension gives rise to errors during typical development and migration scenarios. Model-driven development (MDD) seems to be a promising paradigm to address these challenges, however it has not found adoption in the CMS domain yet. Systematic evidence of the benefit of applying MDD in this domain could facilitate its adoption; however, an empirical investigation of this benefit is currently lacking. In this paper, we present a mixed-method empirical investigation of applying MDD in the CMS domain, based on an interview suite, a controlled experiment, and a field experiment. We consider three scenarios of developing new (both independent and dependent) CMS extensions and of migrating existing ones to a new major platform version. The experienced developers in our interviews acknowledge the relevance of these scenarios and report on experiences that render them suitable candidates for a successful application of MDD. We found a particularly high relevance of the migration scenario. Our experiments largely confirm the potentials and limits of MDD as identified for other domains. In particular, we found a productivity increase up to factor 17 during the development of CMS extensions. Furthermore, our observations highlight the importance of good tooling that seamlessly integrates with already used tool environments and processes.

Dynamic web applications powered by Web Content Management Systems (WCMSs) such as Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal dominate today's web. A main advantage of WCMSs is their functional extensibility by standardized WCMS extensions. However, the development and evolution of these extensions are challenging tasks. Due to dependencies to the core platform and otherWCMS extensions, the code structure of an extension includes a large defect potential. Mistakes usually lead to website crashes and are hard to find, especially for inexperienced developers. In this work, we define a model-driven development (MDD) process and apply it during the development of software extensions for the WCMS Joomla. To address two separate scenarios, involving the development of independent and dependent WCMS extensions, we use an MDD infrastructure, comprising a domain-specific language, a code editor, and reverse engineering facilities. In addition, we provide evidence indicating that our model-driven approach is useful to generate extensions with consistent interdependencies, demonstrating that the main issues of extension development in the WCMS domain can be addressed using a model-driven approach. By applying the MDD infrastructure on actual projects, we additionally present the lessons learned.

Developing software extensions for Web Content Management Systems (WCMSs) like Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal can be a difficult and time consuming process. In this demo we present JooMDD, an environment for model-driven development of software extensions for the WCMS Joomla. JooMDD allows the rapid development of standardised software extensions requiring reduced technological knowledge of Joomla. This implies that even inexperienced developers are able to create their own functional WCMS extensions. This demonstrates that a model-driven approach is suitable for the domain of WCMSs. A supporting video illustrating the main features and a demonstration of JooMDD can be found at: https://youtu.be/Uy_WBIjPldI.

Developing software extensions for Web Content Management Systems (WCMSs) like Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal can be a difficult and time consuming process. In this demo we present JooMDD, an environment for model-driven development of software extensions for the WCMS Joomla. JooMDD allows the rapid development of standardised software extensions requiring reduced technological knowledge of Joomla. This implies that even inexperienced developers are able to create their own functional WCMS extensions. This demonstrates that a model-driven approach is suitable for the domain of WCMSs.

Developing and maintaining software extensions for Web Content Management Systems (WCMSs) like Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal can be a difficult and time consuming process. This poster presents a model-driven process which addresses typical challenges during the migration of software extensions for WCMSs. We introduce JooMDD as a prototypical environment for the development and maintenance of Joomla extensions. JooMDD consists of a domain-specific modelling language for WCMS extensions, a reverse engineering tool to create models based on existing WCMS extensions, and a code generator for software extensions, which can be used to enrich Joomla-based applications. The use of JooMDD within our research demonstrates the application of a model-driven migration process for WCMS extensions.