[Web4lib] Any libraries using Drupal as their website CMS?

[Mark Jordan]

Hi Ross,

On Sat, Jan 28, 2006 at 10:38:48AM -0500, Ross Singer wrote:
> 
> This is something I keep coming back to (for both the public and the  
> intranet), as well, but every time I feel I hit the same limitations  
> (not just with Drupal, but with all the OSS CMSes -- Joomla/Mambo,  
> Xaraya, etc.).
> 
> The first is that I don't feel the workflow management is sophisticated  
> enough (esp. for an intranet).  Maybe I'm looking at this incorrectly,  
> but all of these projects have just one kind of permission layer (and  
> the term "role" and "group" seem interchangeable here).  For real  
> workflow (IMO), you need another layer (role within a group:  member,  
> manager, proxy, etc.).  I'm not sure how you would route approval  
> through hierarchical channels otherwise.
>

Workflow management is one area I'm also concerned about. Drupal has a bunch of
third-party modules that allow pretty fine control, and I'm not convinced that you
can't achieve this functionality using them. However, I'll have to be convinced before
we decide to deploy it.
 
> The second is a really specific problem to how I want to see our  
> website work.
> 
> Rather than a tree of pages of static content (the "article" model), I  
> want the nodes to consist of individual bits, each reusable and  
> possibly servable on its own (with its own keywords and whatnot).  So  
> the "Reserves Policies" page would consist of pieces such as "Reserve  
> Policies for Undergraduates", "Faculty:  Putting items on Reserve",  
> "Teaching Assistants: getting access to the Reserves List", etc.
> 
> For a better example, this of Subject Guides.  Lots of little  
> independent bits put together make up a page.
> 

Absolutely. Here at SFU we've glued together (in the best sense of that word) a lot of 
blocks of content so they can be reused; for example, our subject-specific database 
lists can be slurped into the librarians' subject or course web pages by using a type 
of include tag. We'd need to replicate that type of functionality in a CMS.

Some new features in Drupal seem to be moving in that direction. There's something
called the Content Creation Kit (http://drupal.org/cck-status), and there's also a
useful, functional RDF module (quiet... did I just hear the entire Web4Lib membership
groan?) that can be used to structure content according to defined relationships. These
are supposed to come together in the imminent version 4.7. But, back to your point,
does it allow efficient reuse of content? Probably not as well as you or I'd want.
There's actually an interesting discussion going on at
http://archivemati.ca/2006/01/21/drupal-as-a-mvc-framework/ related to this issue.

> I have talked to others about these points and there is some interest  
> in taking one of the major OSS CMSes (they all pretty much have the  
> same functionality) and modifying it until it meets these criteria.
>
> The issue then is maintaining it since it will basically be a fork of  
> the main project (although there is the possibility of working with the  
> project maintainers themselves).
> 

Not necessarily. If that type of functionality can be achieved with a module (Drupal's
term, but most CMSs have some sort of built-in extensibility mechanism), there may not
need to be a fork. Right now I wish I had time to see if a combination of existing
modules could achieve the required functionality, but alas I don't. In my initial
posting I don't think I explained my immediate need. We have a tight timeline to get a
website (for our Student Learning Commons) up and running, and due to other demands on
our staff, we are thinking that a CMS is the way to go for this site. However, I wish
we had we more time to look into the workflow and content reusability questions in
detail.

Thanks for responding,

Mark