03/14/08 Notes

From Metro Collaborate

Emily Molanphy

• from NYU Med
• contact molanphy at library DOT med DOT nyu DOT edu

• why a CMS?
  • no major design work since 2002
  • difficult to maintain
  • website doesn't reflect administrative changes

• problems to solve
  • templating
  • encourage staff to post content
  • wanted an inventory of pages

• goal-- select a CMS
  • looked at Adobe Contribute (too close to Dreamweaver-- not a step up)
  • commercial systems-- too expensive

• narrowing and analyzing
  • candidate systems-- Joomla, Plone, Drupal

• considerations
  • templating, content types (i.e. classes)
  • conditional publishing (something should only be live for certain dates)
  • presence of an editorial system
  • easily integrated with existing databases
  • familiar scripting software
  • community to draw from

• decision-making
  • eliminated Joomla quickly
  • Plone-- has a very good workflow; written in Python; polished but limited documentation
  • Drupal-- has a workflow module; written in PHP; chaotic but extensive documentation

• chose consumer health libraries as a pilot project
  • librarians there were very eager to get a new web site; came up with a plan on their own

• progress so far
  • created theme based on wireframes so far
  • parent organization color scheme
  • all CSS layout
  • has created test site from dummy in Visio

• creating the theme
  • start in page.tpl.php file
  • named regions in menu module
  • specified formatting in style.css

• other parts of implementing the site
  • Custom Content Kit-- allows you to create create custom content formats; allows you to choose and reuse fields
  • can filter any which way
  • display as block or page
  • Leo Robert Klein's screencast on CCK-- http://chicagolibrarian.com/node/262

• findings about Drupal
  • what's easier-- "Drupalese"; custom content types; regions and blocks; views; inserting PHP
  • what's harder-- multisite; CSS layout; module conflicts; articulating problems; upgrade decision

• other stuff
  • Drupal has a workflow module that allows for assigning roles (i.e only admins can use PHP)
  • hopes to ultimately give editing access to all the librarians
  • goal: many people can create content; few people can approve content

Caroline Fuchs

• Special Collections Librarian at Graduate Center
• site: http://18thcenturyreadingroom.wordpress.com
• contact-- cfuchs AT gc DOT cuny DOT edu

• History of project
  • started on Blogger
  • shifted to Wordpress, which is much more user-friendly
  • 250-350 daily hits, sometimes as many 500 a day

• More about Wordpress
  • Wordpress allows you to include custom headers
  • does an item of the day of something that's in the collection
  • will tag items with non-standard tags
  • different roles possible-- contributor, author, editor
  • WP offers a number of available themes
  • can host it on Wordpress.com or remotely
  • more features/customization are allowed on non-Wordpress installs of Drupal

• Summary: Wordpress is dead-simple for creating and modifying content

Joanna Dispaquale

• Luminis Content Management System

• Pima Community College website
  • 300 users; needed to support hundreds of sites
  • multi-regional, multi-campus college in Arizona
  • website is very locked down
  • needed a large CMS
  • goal-- create new site; control access; change system's behavior in some cases

• baked vs. fried-- publish to flat file (baked) vs. post everything on fly (fried)

• benefits to Luminis
  • Publish XML, HTML, PHP
  • export XML
  • excellent back-end platform (Documentum)
  • comprehensive tag libraries (JSP)

• drawbacks to Luminis
  • proprietary code made some changes difficult-- to talk to Documentum, had to go through Luminus
  • some customizations are rather heavy-handed

• advice
  • get a good vendor contact; we lucked out with an excellent contact who knew the CMS back and forth
  • otherwise, look for flexible software, accessible content outside CMS, extensibility, active developer's group
  • selecting software UWebD discussion list; Web4Lib discussion list
  • going open source-- Code4Lib discussion list; UWebD discussion list
  • then try CMSMatrix.org
  • setting up a new CMS is a good time to rewrite your content

• partial list of technologies needed for setup
  • Java, Perl, HTML, SQL, LDAP