[Web4lib] Website Redesign Advice

[Jason Griffey]

Well, I'm the newly-appointed webmaster (hate the term, but nothing
better to use right now) for our library, and the first thing I did was
insist we move to a CMS.

After doing a review of a half-dozen or so, installing 2 (Drupal and
Joomla), and testing, we decided to go with Joomla. Free, well
supported, PHP/MySQL, and meets our needs nicely. I've heard wonderful
things about Plone as well, but don't have the direct experience with it
that I do with Joomla. It does take some getting used to from the backed
perspective, but our key concern was being able to present information
in clear ways and still be able to diversify maintenance...and Joomla
gives us that ability, and more. We're in testing now for the design,
and plan to launch sometime next month.

Jason

Jason Griffey
Assistant Professor
Reference & Instructional Technology Librarian
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, TN  37403
jason-griffey at utc.edu :: (423) 425-5449 
 

This correspondence should be considered a public record and subject to
public inspection pursuant to the Tennessee Public Records Act

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Andrea Dinkelman
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 12:54 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] Website Redesign Advice

Hello,

I'm part of a committee at Iowa State University (Parks Library) which
is coordinating an eventual redesign of our library website. 

I'm curious to know the following:

1. Does your library utilize a content management system? If yes, which
product?

2. If you created a CMS from scratch, what did you use (e.g. PHP,
MySQL, etc.)?

3. Last, have any of you outsourced website design to a commercial
designer? 

To date, I've reviewed some of the following resources: "Content and
Workflow Management for Library Web Sites: Case Studies" by Holly Yu;
"Creating Database-Backed Library Web Pages" by Stephen Westman; and
Library Hi Tech (V. 24 No. 1 2006-special issue on CMS). 

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise.

Sincerely,

Andrea Dinkelman
Assistant Professor/Science & Technology Librarian
Parks Library
Iowa State University
515-294-6943
adinkelm at iastate.edu 




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