When you’re a big-time Java application engine vendor like the community side of Red Hat’s JBoss, JBoss.org, picking out a CMS (content management system) isn’t a small deal. That’s why JBoss’ selection of Magnolia is not just another CMS deal. After all, the JBoss community sites hosts more than 40 different open-source middleware projects.

JBoss.org project leader Mark Newton explained in a statement that he picked Magnolia because “It was important that our project teams were not restrained by the CMS and that they had free reign to exercise their own individuality and control of their own web space. At the same time we wanted a solution that was simple to use and easy to extend. Magnolia was the perfect solution. Each project has complete control over the look and feel of their site and can even choose to use their own domain in place of jboss.org if they wish to maintain their own identity. Having the ability to do this but still having all the projects run on the same back-end system is critical for our requirements.”

Before this, JBoss.org had used its own in-house CMS to run the site. But, as time went on it was becoming more trouble than it was worth to manage and develop this CMS JBoss, is, when all is said and done, in the middleware business, not the CMS business.

So it was that since they “needed a reliable open-source alternative from a partner we could trust, and … offered a commercial support package” that JBoss turned to Magnolia.

Another plus for JBoss was that Magnolia came with an easy-to-use Web-based interface that minimized the management burden and the need for training. “Everything can be done remotely,” Newton said . “Users with the correct permissions simply login to their site, navigate to the page they wish to edit and select the right section, before being offered a set of logical choices to add, remove or edit the content. Likewise, administration can also be carried out remotely using a browser.”

Magnolia can work as a standalone CMS, or you can use it, depending on the version, with WebSphere, WebLogic, Tomcat, or JBoss The pure open-source version is a free-download. The primary difference between it and the commercial versions are support, a few additional features, and built-in interoperability with the aforementioned application servers.