Like when I saw John Stahls post about Web Collectives new product MetaNav. MetaNav will let you build navigation structures that are independent of the folder hierarchy. Like EasyPublisher did when I and Johan Carlsson wrote it. In 2001.:-)
From → plone
That being said, this is pretty much how every CMS out there works.
The “revolutionary” thing for a lot of people regarding Plone was that you built this navigation along the way, as a normal file system approach.
I’m happy to see an alternative implementation for people that want to construct navigation manually, though. Having the navigation created automatically was an explicit design choice with Plone, and seems to be the most intuitive approach for people that haven’t used any other CMSes.🙂
I have to admit that I don’t know much about other CMS’s, especially SQL-based ones, but you are probably right. Without any real document hierarchy you have to build it through navigation. With EasyPublisher you also built the navigation as with Plone. But you always had the possibility to remove items from the navigation or add items in other places.
That was really practical, and I had actually forgotten this, and how easy things could be after four years with CPS and Plone, and struggles with how to publish one item in several places.🙂
MetaNav will surely come in handy for many sites. Super job!