[Web4lib] CMS or something else?

[Tyson Tate]

On 9/1/06, Andrew Mutch <amutch at waterford.lib.mi.us> wrote:
> You're kidding, right? No one actually still manages their web site like
> this do they? With this kind of system, I would never have to worry about
> job security. If I required all of my librarians to submit their content
> to me, which I then reviewed for "the proper code and styles", and which I
> alone, as the "gatekeeper" could add to the site, I could easily fill 40
> hours a week with work.

I guess it all depends on how valuable your content is to you. Do your
librarians have the time to be trained in proper accessibility
practices? Will they be able to follow your style guidelines? Does SEO
matter for your in-house search tools?

If everything could be taken care of with a slick CMS, why not just
buy the CMS, set it up, and then fire the web team? After all, we
don't need them to maintain the site, right?

In no way should a "gatekeeper" be spending 40 hours a week on adding
content. Surely your librarians aren't adding several hundred pages
per week, are they?

> I would say that well-organized web site with a good CMS and tools that
> allows authors to add content without messing up the site structure should
> suffice these days. That old system worked great ... in 1997.

Perhaps you'd like to give examples of CMS's that allow people to add
content within navigational frameworks which enforce good coding
standards, maintain a decent level of accessibility (remember, it's
not only good practice -- it's the law), and makes sure that all
content follows style guidelines. If there is one, I'd love to learn
more about it. After my library is done redesigning our site, we're
going to look in to implementing a good CMS (most likely Drupal) to
save us fromt the ungodly horror that is maintaining a static-html
site with Dreamweaver.

Regards,
Tyson