Community

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Agenda for CWG

Tool Tip

Chris Pederick wrote a plugin for Firefox that is invaluable for anyone who does more than merely updates content. There's a version for Safari as well, but none for Internet Explorer. Go here: http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ to read more about it and to download the (free) plugin.

Skip will give a demonstration at the meeting. Every developer on campus should be using this!

Information and Discussion: Content Management Systems

A content management system is probably in your future. Skip will talk about what they are, why you might want one, why you might not want one, how it might come to a theatre near you, and when.

What is content management?

Workflow
Staging: information goes first to a staging area for review
Approval: can assign multiple roles and workflow
Scheduling: information appears or is removed on a schedule
Messaging: letting someone know that a step has been taken
Object Repository
Like include files or shared borders
Object exists in one place only, but can appear in multiple locations
Change the source and it changes everywhere
Objects include text, all media types, documents, etc.
Object galleries
Roles
Author, Editor, Manager, Administrator, more
Each role automatically has rights and restrictions
Groups let you assign roles to groups of people
Easy Editing
Administrator can designate what on the page you can revise and what you cannot
Most have both a WYSIWYG interface (limited) and an HTML interface
Management Tools
Change log
Business rules, privacy policies, etc.
Reporting
Localization, Internationalization
Plugins
Blog, wiki, calendar, etc

What does it offer us at Boise State?

Main: answers the dual need to get away from FrontPage yet still make it comparatively easy to edit web pages

Secondary: cut down on duplication (and degradation) of data

Tertiary: reporting, central management, staging prevents incomplete data from going live, extensibility, interface to central systems, etc.

What does it not offer?

It doesn't make editing easy. It doesn't let you treat web pages like word processing.

It doesn't make web site maintenance less burdensome or less time-consuming.

In short, it doesn't lessen anything; rather, it lets us do more with the same amount of effort (roughly).

It isn't magic. It will require departments to re-examine business process, workflow, information and message, and—inevitably—staffing.

What products are we looking at?

First choice is to go with open source, for two reasons. One, because many open source packages are closely associated with higher education, whereas most commercial applications target business. Two, because open source lets us modify how the product behaves.

  1. Plone
  2. Joomla
  3. Lenya
  4. Midgard

How and when might we see a campus CMS?

A CMS doesn't run itself. It operates off a database, so we need a database administrator and a CMS administrator. These would be OIT positions. Obviously, this isn't going to happen this year!

College of Business is working on an implementation now, on their own server.

Once some initial development work is done, I intend to put up an evaluation server for Plone and invite folks to look at it. Maybe next summer.

Once we have a CMS admin position, we can get serious. This group will be among the first to know.