[Web4lib] CMS or something else?

[Francis Kayiwa]

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On Sep 1, 2006, at 1:54 PM, Keith D. Engwall wrote:

> Our director has requested that we look into providing some way for
> librarians to add content to our web site (http:// 
> www.lib.catawba.edu).
> On one hand this is pretty much in the realm of CMS, but I would  
> like to
> find something that works behind the scenes, rather than something  
> with
> the content management controls right on the page.  In other words, I
> want the staff to be able to log into a back end interface that allows
> them to add/edit files, while the front end is good ol' XHTML/CSS,  
> same
> as what I'd put up using vi on the server itself.
>
> I've looked through the CMS matrix, but thus far have not found quite
> what I'm looking for, and I'm not sure that a CMS is quite what I'm
> looking for.

The problem with Content Management Systems is the lack of clarity on  
what a CMS really means. :-) Obviously, all the "CMS"es don't share  
the same features and for your purposes clearly they didn't  
accommodate any(?) all(?). CMS's -certainly in that matrix- blend  
into blogs, templates, version control, workflow, portal, new  
publishing, yada yada {insert buzzword compliant flavour of the month}.

In your case it seems to me anyways, a good version control +  
templating system is what your boss wants. This eliminates the "web  
admin" clog and allows librarians to provide content and the web  
admin to worry about CSS/XHTML front.

I have test installed Bricolage and Plone which can do this. I will  
hazard that some others in the matrix can too but will only comment  
on those I have tried. :-) Both CMS's are very granular and as CMS  
admin you can limit what they can do, right down to meta information  
associated with the page(s). Both also have really good workflows  
that would prevent any user from touching the CSS files or even  
publishing without the web admins signing off on it -if you desire to  
wield a big stick like that. :-) As someone in this thread pointed  
out this would seem like too much "busy work" for me though.

regards,
./fxk
===============
Francis Kayiwa
Library Systems Team
4-180, MC 234
T: +1.312.996.2716
W: http://www.uic.edu/~kayiwa
Key: http://tigger.uic.edu/~kayiwa/kayiwa.gpg


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