[WEB4LIB] RE: Web Editing solutions for sites with many authors

[Bobb Menk]

Here at MIT Lincoln Lab, we're using MovableType (the blog software) as 
a "CMS - lite" for the library. We've been able to replace hundreds of 
(badly) hand-coded pages with pages output from a database that actually 
meet standards.

Cost was minimal - free to get started, then we negotiated a simple, 
reasonable license based on our estimate of the total number of blogs we 
planned to create. It's running on a high-end Windows box with Apache 2 
as the web server. Backend is MySQL.

The slowest part was converting the existing pages into blog entries. 
The pages were a big mess and I couldn't find enough logical consistency 
in them to come up with any kind of batch conversion process so it was 
copy and paste my way through. Maybe you could make the individual page 
editors do this to get them used to the interface ;>

We have about 10 people editing subject guides in it. This way staff are 
really forced to focus on content organization and management - 
(traditional librarian strengths certainly) and no longer divert 
themselves on the minutiae of HTML details (not their strengths, though 
some of them like to do to it so much that they miss it).

Each subject area is its own blog. Staff organize the subcategories as 
they see fit, add what they want by filling in a web form. Navigation 
within the blog is automatically driven by the categories they choose 
and fits into the side navigation where it's supposed to. The templates 
have been written in such a way as to make all these blogs appear as 
just another part of the larger library web.

MovableType is set up to output static pages. It can do pages on the 
fly, but we wanted static pages so that the Lab-wide search engine can 
index them easily.

For those subject guides where we also produce in-house current 
awareness "publications" (essentially just our cullings of current 
topical news items), we combine the traditional subject guide with an 
RSS feed directly on the main index page. The RSS is generated either by 
some Filemaker databases or by other blogs devoted just to news items.

Each guide is also automatically available as an RSS feed to our users, 
since MovableType automatically produces various flavors of feed for 
each blog. We also aggregate all these internally-produced feeds in a 
further blog that just updates itself several times a day so staff can 
catch the recent changes to blogs produced by others in one spot.

There have been some drawbacks:

Tables really need to be created in an HTML editor separately then 
copy/pasted into an entry since there aren't any really HTML tools to 
speak of within MT. They can be saved elsewhere on our web and linked to 
if the guide editor is more comfortable with things that way.

There are the inevitable difficulties getting output formats that 
satisfy staff as well as users. (Not everyone automatically buys in to 
this idea).

All in all, I'd say it's been a very positive thing and it leaves us in 
a better position to move on to the NEXT BIG THING when it arrives, 
since most of our web is now standards compliant code coming out of a 
database.

Bobb Menk
Electronic Resources Librarian
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
bmenk at ll.mit.edu
781-981-5354


Caughey, Mary wrote:
> 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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