Introduction
Riot is a framework to build content managed websites. End-users often refer to it as CMS, but from a developer's point of view the term Content Management Framework (CMF) might actually be more accurate since Riot is not an out-of-the-box system. It's either no full-stack framework as it is based upon several other Open Source projects, most notably Spring and Hibernate.
One of Riot's most eye-catching features is the possibility to edit content directly on the website via the Riot toolbar. We believe that this kind of WYSIWYG interface is the most natural way to edit HTML content, albeit it is not very well suited for "invisible" data, i.e. data that is not directly displayed on the website (or at least not rendered as HTML) like content inside a Flash movie. Therefore Riot provides an alternative editing view that lets you access your data via lists and forms.
What's special about this backoffice view is that it also allows you to edit your business objects. Unlike other systems, Riot doesn't force you to store all your data in generic data structures. It instead encourages the use of structured data.