Barrel - a content management system

Welcome to the Barrel Project homepage.

What is Barrel (at the moment)?

Barrel is a "content management system". This a loosely defined term used by many people and projects to mean quite different things. In our case, it means a system to help people manage their web sites without forcing them to understand HTML, FTP and so on. One major goal of the system is to separate decisions about style from decisions about content. Another goal is to automate the generation of default pages, summaries, search indexes and RSS feeds. Although based on a general-purpose model of content management, one important use of Barrel is planned to be in the production and management of on-line journals and weblogs.

At the moment, Barrel is still in an "alpha" state. It is more of a technology demonstrator than a comfortably usable product. You can edit pages, change styles and produce web sites with it, but the user interface is a bit clumsy, and many important additional features are scheduled for later releases.

Where do I get Barrel?

Barrel is available from Sourceforge. Both a deployable "war file" and a source snaphot are available from the project download page.

How do I install and configure Barrel?

Check out the Barrel Installation and Configuration Guide

How do I use Barrel?

Check out the Barrel User Guide

Is anyone already using Barrel?

There are currently two sites built and maintained using Barrel:

• Frank's Education Pages
• The Servlet Shop

If you use Barrel for your site, let me know and I'll add your site to this list.

How can I make suggestions and discuss Barrel?

We have two mailing lists for the Barrel project:

• "barrel-announce" is a low traffic list for announcements about new releases etc.
• "barrel-interest" is a general discussion list for suggestions, bugfixes and comments.

You may subscribe, unsubscribe and view the archives at Sourceforge.