Re: [seul-edu] please help if possible

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw@openminddev.net>]

> > LINZL11@aol.com wrote:
> >> [If you respond to this, be sure to include Lindsay's email address
> >> as a CC--Doug]
> >>
> >> to whoever may be able to respond to my inquiry,
> >> Hello, my name is Lindsay and I will be a senior at Eastern Chritian
> >> High School next year.  I am working on finding a way to build an
> >> online newspaper for my school next year and for the future.  I am
> >> unaware if this site and emial address is able to answer that
> >> question or give me steps to creating our own paper but I would
> >> appriciate any infromation if available.
> >> Thank you,
> >> Lindsay

> Dennis Daniels wrote:
> > I'd go with Tiki. modular, granular, easy to install, file and photo
> > galleries, workgroups

On Friday 11 July 2003 00:50, Yishay Mor wrote:
> There's http://tikiwiki.sourceforge.net/ and there's
> http://www.twiki.org/. I'm assuming you meant the latter, which is the
> more popular. Correct?

Dennis' comment about photo galleries suggests tiki 
(http://tikiwiki.sourceforge.net).

However, before deciding on the few mentioned so far, I would suggest Lindsay 
goes to http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php.  It is essentially a demo 
site for over 50 different open-source or free CMS systems that run on PHP 
and mysql.  As such it misses a few good CMS systems (like Plone - which is 
Python/Zope based) but otherwise covers quite a substantal number of them.

One of the key features that you will need to decide upon is whether you wish 
to have a workflow / approval process.  Some of the CMS systems (Plone for 
example) allow you to distinguish between writing content and allowing it to 
be 'published' (ie, go live on the site).  Essentially there are (at least) 3 
types of users.  'Guests' only get to look at public (published) content.  
'Authors' are allowed to submit content for publication, but it does not 
automatically get put up on the site.  'Editors' review submitted articles, 
and determine if it is okay to 'publish' (ie, go live).

Many CMS systems (and Wiki systems in general) do not allow for this 
distinction.  In general in a Wiki, content goes live the moment someone has 
finised writing it.  What makes sense for you all depends on how much control 
you wish to have over what content gets published, and how much to trust your 
authors.  If you don't care what gets up, or if the only people authoring 
directly on the site are your editors (ie, everyone else sends a email to an 
editor) then it does not matter.  However, if you wish to use the site as 
part of the content submitting process, but you still want control over what 
gets 'published', then it does matter.

Personally, I have installed and tested and liked Plone, Tiki, e107 and TWiki, 
although I would not really suggest TWiki for an online newspaper.  Any of 
the others might be okay, depending on your needs, and of couse there are 
many that I have not had a chance to look at.

For more info, search Google for 'open source cms'.

Hope this helps.  Good luck.

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 

Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia  UTC + 10
http://www.openminddev.net