[WEB4LIB] Web Editing solutions for sites with many authors

[Caughey, Mary]

Gary and others--

I've been asked by one of our library adminstrators to post a query on
this list about Content Management Systems, so I hope respondents will
share their replies to Gary's message.  Content Management seems to be a
topic that's frequently raised here, but the discussion never seems to
go very far.  

I'm guessing it's an issue that many libraries are struggling with, but
for which there still isn't a very satisfactory solution.  CMS seems to
be a wheel that needs to be invented, but libraries rarely have the
resources to do the inventing.

I am willing to share Oregon State University Libraries' experience with
distributed web authoring in hopes that others will come forth with
better solutions:

Although we probably don't have the the 50 web authors Gary mentions, we
probably have 30 individuals contributing to our web site.  As Gary
describes, they have varying skill levels and their contributions may
range from occasionally editing a page that's already been created to
creation of new content on a regular basis.

Small portions of our site are database-driven.  We have a "database of
databases" that runs on a PHP platform, and our ejournals list is hosted
by Serials Solutions. We also host some digital collections that, for
the most part, are ContentDM-based.

The remainder of our library website comprises several thousand html
pages.  For the most part, the pages have been created on a Macromedia
editor.  We started out with HomeSite (formerly owned by Allaire), so
many of our pages were written in a code-based environment.  Eventually
some of us migrated to Dreamweaver, and now many staff are using
Contribute.

Contribute seems to be a fairly nice product, but it doesn't work
ideally in our situation. The best web environment for Contribute is one
that is developed in Dreamweaver, and requires web contributors to
create their pages from Dreamweaver templates.  We've been more likely
to develop our templates using a non-Dreamweaver editor, so at times
they haven't been a snap to edit in Contribute, which is pretty limited
in it's interpretation of CSS.  I won't go into specifics unless anybody
is especially interested in this topic.

But even if Contribute did work perfectly, using it to maintain a
current, accurate, consistent and compliant website would be a
labor-intensive effort, because it's based on static HTML.  

We need better solutions, and I'm looking forward to hearing from those
libraries who are using them.  It would be worthwhile to hear what was
involved in implementation of your CMS:
what kinds of programming resources were required?  How long was the
implementation process?  Is the product open source? Etc.

Thanks.

Mary Caughey
Digital Access Coordinator
Oregon State University Libraries
541-737-7290
mary.caughey at oregonstate.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of garyp at itd.umd.edu
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 8:23 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Web Editing solutions for sites with many authors


(Speaking of lurkers)

We at the U. of Maryland Libraries have over 150 web authors for our
site (http://www.lib.umd.edu/), of which usually over 100 are active
over the course of a semester.  Editing by these distributed authors is
done mostly on static pages, working directly on the code through the
textarea box of an aging cgi application, or locally through text
editors and uploaded through the same cgi app.  Skill sets of these
authors range from highly skilled to rudimentary.

Our ultimate goal is to have the site inside a CMS, with editing access
to the site regulated by the CMS, and a WYSIWYG editor that keeps
authors away from templates, etc. and generates standards compliant
xhtml.

Our main obstacle to progress in this area has been a dearth of
dedicated programming resources.  This has contributed to the fact that
a large part of the site is still static instead of dynamically driven
through the perl/php/mysql and jsp/tomcat avenues available to us.  It
has also kept us from considering building a home-grown CMS up to this
point.  This is changing (we're getting a web app developer added to the
team), but slowly.

My question to the list is, IF you have a large number of authors (say
over 50) how are you dealing with the issues this situation creates?
Primarily we're interested in how your html code gets generated and what
editor(s) you are using.

Is everything stored in databases, content updated through web forms,
and all code generated dynamically? Is this a commercial/open-source CMS
or all home grown?  Is all content edited through web-forms or is there
a browser-based editor you've been able to plug in, like Mozile?

Do you have a Macromedia Contribute-style client side solution?

Do you have a WebDAV-driven solution where every author has access to
their part of the site, and can use Dreamweaver, etc?  How do you handle
code consistency and look and feel issues?

Thanks for any information you can offer.  I'll accept input from
anybody, but am primarily interested in sites where authorship is widely
distributed, and your solutions for dealing with the same.

I am VERY interested if you have implemented any of the open-source CMS
solutions out there (again, VERY interested if you are a large
distributed site).  I am particularly interested in apache lenya, mostly
for its xml underpinnings.

Thanks everybody.  Feel free to email me directly as well.


****************************************************************
Gary B. Phillips               email:          garyp at itd.umd.edu
Web Systems Manager            phone:               301 405 9025
ITD                            mobile phone:        301 318 6902
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