Can I please have opinions on content management systems? 1. Yes or no?
We are evaluating the benefits of going to a CMS. What are the chief benefits? We are currently using Dreamweaver. Would Adobe Contribute suffice if all is going well with my team of web contributors now?
If there is a lot of content that requires frequent updates, a CMS might be a good tool. Especially if you want to distribute that work to several people.
If the goal is to allow non-web staff to update their own content I feel a CMS still requires some level of governance or at least an understanding of:
- Communicating/writing on the web
- Technical requirements
Having done some volunteer work for political campaigns in the past where I set up a Wordpress site only to see the users use headings for entire paragraphs (because they wanted them bold) or upload huge images that, while they where properly sized with height and width attributes, were full, hi-res photos straight from the camera.
All I'm saying is that it's not as simple as setting it up and walking away. Having said that, I know CEHD has had success with setting things up and then keeping the lines of communication open to fix the kinds of problems I mentioned above.
2. UMContent?
Does UMContent work well for anyone? It is centrally supported and free. Any problems with it?
Apologies to any UMContent users out there, but the last time I went to a UMContent demo, it looked...cumbersome. Other options provide better usability in my opinion.
I think Drupal or Wordpress offer perfectly viable, flexible options. Both require access to a web server running PHP and MySQL. Not everyone on campus has that. So there is a barrier there.
Wordpress' popularity does bring it into sharp focus for security exploits. Generally speaking, you'll be fine if you have someone who can keep it up-to-date, but themes and plugins often have security holes as well.