1. .COM was not available
2. .WS is a widely accepted as a gTLD domain for both marketing as well as technical SEO purposes (this is where some of the irrelevant ramble may help)
3. It does not restrict us to any particular platforms (like .mobi does, for instance)
4. Unlike any other ccTLDs or sTLDs that are marketed or accepted by major search engines as gTLDs, .WS is and should be more stable because of the affiliate with Global Domains International

Thank you for your feedback – I will add the information to make the article too.

Actually, it was you yourself who framed this piece as a justification, by beginning what otherwise is (indeed) an information piece with a Hegelian-type dialectical opening structure [your conversation with a friend "....who really could not understand the reason we run Vesica on the .ws TLD ... he was adamant that we can and only should use .COM. This has, of course, come up in the past ..."]. This dialectical device inherently means your “antithesis” is framed as a justification.

But justification or information, that’s neither here nor there. The point is most of the piece is simply information about TLDs (quite right there); and yet the piece is titled “Why we went with the .WS TLD” so your readers would therefore have a rightful expectation of coming away with an understanding about why you chose it. (I don’t, I’m afraid, and I’ve read it a couple of times to see if I missed something.)

Traditional Art

-Poetry and Writing-
Rhyming
Couplets
Telling a story
Describing something
Has words
Makes sense
Doesn’t make sense
Is about something
Can be read left to right
Is in a book
Uses paragraphs and correct grammar

-Theatre and Dance-
Dialogue
Telling a story
Plot
Conflict
On a stage

-Painting and Drawing-
Scenery
Realism
Abstract
Surrealism
Minimalist

-Music-
Rhythm
Harmony
Genre
Style
Composition
Musical Scores
Sheet Music
Singer, band and instruments

Our team has actually worked with Django – and we have used other PHP frameworks like CodeIgniter and Symfony too. The point of using a CMS as opposed to an MVC framework is the relatively consistency you are allowed. You can write terrible code within the parameters provided via an MVC framework too and even if you write good code, it is still a custom build. When you build a website using a CMS – any CMS – it is easier for other developers to pick it up. Again, the discussion was about a CMS – not about frameworks.

It is, at the end of the day, about preference. If Django works for you and your clients, you should use it. Superiority or anyone’s opinion thereof is a moot point.

If you have limitations in terms of your budget, Drupal is superior to Django…. just like VHS was superior to Beta (consumers used VHS while TV production houses used Beta)…. and PCs are “superior” to Macs. But if quality and performance are important, and you have the budget, like many mid-sized to large museums (like Walker Art), you owe it to yourself to at least look into Django.

Other sites that use Django: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Pinterest, Instagram, and Disqus (the commenting framework used on this blog).

One powerful – but still relatively unknown – Open Source framework that’s on the rise and that isn’t mentioned here is Django (www.djangoproject.com). The internationally acclaimed and award-winning Walker Art Center (www.walkerart.org) uses Django as the foundation of its CMS. The award-winning resource http://www.MuseumAnalytics.org is powered by Django. And my agency, Plein Air Interactive (www.pleinairinteractive.com) has developed a Django CMS specifically designed for museums, which we’ve rolled out to several clients including the Maine Maritime Museum (www.mainemaritimemuseum.org).

Drupal and WordPress are excellent foundations for a museum web CMS, and we’ve built sites using them. If you can only afford to develop your site with your own internal staff, they are very good choices. But if you want great interaction design, with features tailored precisely to the needs of museum audiences and accessible to the physically and visually impaired, you’ll need to hire a development team to create custom features, no matter what CMS framework you choose. And if that’s the case, Django is definitely worth a look. Django’s strength is the ability to spin up powerful custom features (for online collections, events, exhibitions, searchable archives, etc.) very quickly.

I recently wrote a blog post about the virtues of using Django as a museum CMS (www.pleinairinteractive.com/blog/2012/05/14/django-worth-look-museums-open-source-content-management/).

It’s definitely an option to consider.