Re: [school-discuss] CMS input requested..

["Gordon J. Holtslander" <holtslander@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm trying to evaluate CMS for a few applications.  

The first being a simpler more inclusive way a managing a small community web 
site.  Second a more inclusive adaptable way of managing some of the 
education based sites I manage.

I have tried drupal - it appears to have a large number of features, wide use, 
which assumes it is stalbe and reliable.

BUT - the documentation is very fragmented.  

For example.  For the community web I wanted to set up a simple menu 
structure, linking to  10 or so different "pages" and provide other 
registered users the ability to change and add content to select pages.  This 
is what drupal is supposed to excel at, but after more than a week of reading 
the online documentation and playing around I wasn't able to figure how to do 
this.   I decided to look at other solutions simply because I was running out 
of time.

If anyone has examples of very good documentation outside of the drupal site 
please let us know.  I am aware that there are a couple of books out.  I may 
be have to purchase a book - but that really goes against the spirit.

Joomla looks easier to manage than drupal.  Joomla requires that any content 
updated/submitted be first aproved by an "administrator/publisher" and the 
location of the content is determined by the administrator/publisher.  There 
appears to be a very good third party community building module available for 
joomla - it can be installed at no cost - but there is a fee for its 
documentation, which really limits what can be done with it, unless one has 
vast amounts of free time.

I'm playing with tikiwiki and twiki now.  Twiki is interesting in that it does 
not use a database, uses perl and rcs.  Its focus is more of a collaboration 
tool than a cms.

The biggest issue I've come across is that lots of CMS solutions while they 
may be very sophisticated and have extensive capabilites, most have very poor 
documentation.   This makes it difficult to take advantage of the features.

I have had a very difficult time finding a CMS with adequate documentation.  I 
would recommend trying any of them out in a non-critical situation before 
committing to any particular cms.

Gord

On Wednesday 12 July 2006 8:53 pm, Justin Riddiough wrote:
> I had thought the direction to go was with Joomla! as I'd found it a
> pretty flexible system to work with.  Given recent news that their
> lead developer has moved on to other projects and they are
> reorganizing, I think the CMS is something to spend a little more time
> looking at.
>
> It looks like another good CMS out there is drupal, and I'd put them
> on near equal footing as far as capabilities.  If they are both still
> active projects down the road, which would offer more customizations
> and open components that would be customized (if needed) and
> integrated into the website?  I haven't spent much time with drupal
> yet, but it would be worth learning it if it is the better choice.
>
> Any thoughts?

-- 
Gordon J. Holtslander	/	Dept of Biology
holtslander@xxxxxxxxxxxxx /	112 Science Place
phone (306) 966-4433	/	University of Saskatchewan
fax (306) 966-4461	/	Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E2
http://homepage.usask.ca/~gjh289 CANADA