From Static to Dynamic:Choosing and Implementing a

CMSRuth Kneale, rkneale@nso.eduNational Solar Observatory, Advanced Technology Solar Telescope

What’s a CMS anyway?

CMS = Content Management System Used to collaboratively and interactively

create, manage, control, and publish information

Known by many other terms PDM or EDMS, like DocuShare Web CMS, like Drupal Wiki

We need a web CMS

Why do we want one?

To avoid any more of the “single point syndrome”

To enable: Ease of administration Increased team collaboration Increased functionality Improved presentation for the web

site

Our Basic Starting Point

Open Source = $0 cost LAMP Setup

Must Haves

Audit trail Content approval WYSIWYG editor Granular privileges Friendly URLs Versioning Content reuse CGI support

Should Haves

Sandbox/staging area Online administration Inline administration Mass uploading Site map/index

Nice to Have

Contact management Drag-n-drop Photo gallery Events calendar Web statistics

To CMS or to Wiki?

That is the question Both are strong possibilities

How to determine? Experience of others (listservs, etc) Cmsmatrix.org and wikimatrix.org Opensourcecms.com Experts-Exchange.com Local evaluation

Initial Search Results WebCMS’s:

Lenya Drupal e107 eTouch ExpressionEngine Joomla! Plone WebGUI Xoops

Wiki’s: Giki KeheiWiki MediaWiki MoniWiki PHPwiki PmWiki PukiWiki SnipSnap TWiki

The Weeding Begins

Exclusions based on: Too many missing functionalities Hidden fees Currency of support Required database underpinnings Reports of others on ease of installation Reports of others on ease of use Short evaluation on opensourcecms

The Final Four

Drupal TWiki

WebGUIMediaWiki

These were installed and tested locally.

Drupal: Adding Content

WebGUI: Adding Content

TWiki: Adding Content

MediaWiki: Adding Content

Local Testing

Small group of local users made up of staff who would also be final users of the product

Created, edited content Provided feedback

General Thoughts

Wanted familiar look-and-feel Wanted terminology changed Liked the CMSs

“More like Word” Disliked the wikis

“Too much work”

The Winner Is…

Next Steps

Expanding functionality Ingesting existing site Training staff on use Going live on new server by 2008

http://atst.nso.edu(after January 1st)

Thanks for Listening!