FBP CMS

Working as a creator involves many moving parts, from workflow to tools, studio, administration, and just running a business. As a result, the days are long, and sometimes we just want to make pictures. So I wanted to improve my workflow by creating a CMS that would integrate with my process and deliver content to clients.

The bread and butter of FB Productions was content, photo, and video, and we make a lot of it. Sites for photography and video are fairly common today, but in 2009 there was nothing for the working photographer or videographer that fit our workflow. It was manual work, and while we had early versions of Lightroom, it didn't connect to anything. The online platforms were worse. Flikr was no better then than it is now. YouTube wasn't a thing, so where do you put video?

Our CMS had to do several things. Batch uploads, billing, fulfillment, marketing, and distribution were just some of the things missing from available platforms, and the ones that had them were expensive. So I built my own.

Of course, it was still a Web 2.0, and the LAMP stack was what you used, so that's what I did. I'm not a backend programmer, so I didn't know what couldn't be done, and connected Lightroom export to an upload application or plugin or whatever it was back then. It did include manual steps, but it worked well enough to save some time. Of course, my partner, who handled video production, could manage her stuff, too.

For the UI, we mainly focused on the user experience and delivery to paying clients. The PHP part worked well enough, but the front end still had problems. In addition, styling was difficult because CSS was, is, and always will be a disappointment, and CSS preprocessors were gaining traction. However, building a CMS was my starting point for thinking about software at the system level. How can we solve end-to-end problems, and how can we model a sophisticated workflow? It can only get better from here.

As time went on, content as a service became a buzzword. Soon, there were CMSs that could handle creative content, and I started thinking more about the user experience of the online application. The SAAS world was alive and kicking, and the Web 2.0 tooling for custom process was starting to look a little long in the tooth. Our CMS served us for a while, but when the industry caught up, we decided it wasn't worth the expense of maintaining it.