[Web4lib] Commercial website CMS products and Open-sourceconsultants

[K.G. Schneider]

> Hello,
> 
> We are a relatively small non-profit organization. Currently, we are
> looking
> into implementing a website CMS. We are leaning toward commercial products
> at this time given that we do not currently have any IT staff. However, we
> are planning to hire some staff in the next year, so open-source is not
> out
> of the question. I have read the previous messages/discussions on website
> CMSes and have two questions:
> 
> 1. Regarding commercial products: Based on your experiences, are there any
> that you would recommend?

At MPOW (My Place Of Work) we use a commercial product (Community Servers)
but the route I would recommend most is to use a product that will make
migration fairly easy when it's time to move on to the next product. 

MPOW ended up with our CMS in a circuitous fashion, and while it's working
for us, had we begun the CMS discovery process a year or so later, I think
we would have ended up with one of the stronger open source
products-something I wouldn't rule out for the future, particularly now that
we have a well-developed environment to serve as a model for the next CMS.
(This was echoed to me by a vendor who is not now working in CMS's but did
for a long time, who said that there were just too many good open source
choices for some of the commercial products to remain viable-something else
to consider: you want a product company/organization that will be there for
a good while, and in this case, except for very large, specialized products,
I'd put my money on open source.)

We too were dependent on external tech support for the migration, and quite
frankly you'll need some tech assistance anyway, so don't discount using a
good consultant and a good product. But make sure you aren't digging
yourself into another silo, and after you move your content over, plan to
manage your content and services in ways that make it (*relatively...*) easy
to change one or the other; think associated services (hello, Peter Murray,
we read you loud and clear!). MPOW migrated from an undocumented,
proprietary system that twined together too many things (created, in all
fairness, before most of us could spell CMS), and it was slow-motion agony.
I've seen our current site repurposed in another system for demonstration
purposes, almost lickety-split, and it is nice to know we can pick up our
toys and move if we want to. 

I'm guessing that the Plone/Zope packages are easy to migrate from, but do
probe that question carefully.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com