Is a Content Management System in Your Future? An overview of Drupal, Joomla!, and Plone

Overview Introduction and Disclaimers What to Keep in Mind Overview: Technologies Ease of Use Core Features, Add-ons Customizing

Darci Hanning Software Application Developer MLIS, Information School, June 2005 Coursework on Content Management Oregon State Library, Technology Development Consultant Plonista :-)

Disclaimers There is no Silver Bullet Head start on research Presentation will be available at NW Central: http://nwcentral.org/

Things to Think About Your organization’s goals? Current technology skills? Where will your website live? Library-specific features? What about YOU?

What is content management? Create/edit/delete content in a shared repository (database) Organize content Content can be published/visible or not based on conditions (workflow, access permissions) Layout control through CSS (+ template of some kind)

Some benefits Manage website through a web browser Multiple content editors (access control) Allow patron participation Control of branding elements Archive and reuse content

“Good” CMS Content types Workflow User roles and permissions “Versioning” Security (unauthorized access)

Technology Platform Drupal Joomla! Plone *nix, Windows, OS X Operating System *nix, Windows, OS X *nix, Windows, *nix, Windows, OS X Programming Language PHP Python Database MySQL Zope (Object oriented)

Ease of Installation Drupal and Joomla! Plone Web-based installation wizard Assumes Apache, MySQL installed and working Plone Command line install script for Unix/OS X and binary install for Windows Installs “everything” you need (Python, Zope, Plone but not Apache)

Ease of Use PLANNING YOUR WEBSITE What kind of content? Blogs, events, news, etc. What kind of features? Commenting, sorting, searching, etc.

“Content Soup” “…Drupal treats your content as a giant soup, with each piece of content having properties… Specific kinds of pages, specific sections of your site are created by pulling up any content with certain properties…” (Joomla is similar to Drupal)

“Content Soup” Dynamically filtering content based on properties to display the web page you want. “…properties like number of comments, creation date, author, associated keywords, etc.”

“Content Soup” Joomla! Demo

Considerations Ultimate in flexibility Think in terms of properties Mix/match what shows up easily Think in terms of properties Natural approach for many people Manually create menu / navigation. Content creation has unique interface.

Hierarchical “In place” content creation/editing Lots of content types Page, news item, event, file, image, etc. Common properties for all types Title, description, creator Unique properties for some Event versus Page

Hierarchical Plone Demo

Considerations Create content “in place” (go where you want it and add it there) Navigation/menus automatically created, harder to customize Lots of default content types

Default Content Types Drupal Joomla! Page (no author, timestamps, or comments) Story (author, timestamps, comments, and is always on the “front page”) Joomla! Articles Links News Feeds

Additional Content Types Community contributed Drupal modules Joomla! extensions Plone products

Workflow The ability to control availability of content by its “state” Drupal: add-on module Joomla!: ?? Plone: built-in

Security PHP is relatively non-secure Monitor PHP security announcements Monitor Drupal and Joomla! security announcements Zope/Plone is relatively more secure Still, monitor Zope and Plone news announcements

Core Features Drupal Joomla! Plone WYSIWYG Ed A Y Site Search Blogs/RSS A/Y RSS Aggr. ? Wiki Friendly URLS Forums Versioning

Library Features Drupal Joomla Plone MARC, OAI-PMH, Bibliography, III Authentication, Z39.50 search, Millennium integration, remote search Joomla ? Plone OAI-PMH, Bibliography

Customization Layout / Display: Contributed Themes **Documentation** Templates: page structure CSS: style and color Contributed Themes **Documentation** How quickly does it become hard to do interesting things?

Customization Functionality Drupal modules Joomla! Extensions Some core features are not ON by default Joomla! Extensions Plone products

Customization Be thoughtful in your selection Not all extensions, modules, products are created equally Responsive developer? Good history? Other contributions? Good documentation? Don’t go crazy with a ton of add-ons! Upgrade issues Potential conflicts with other add-ons Test it first!

General Closing Remarks Must have a team the works Learning curve Some support problems Extensions are written by anyone in the community – ANYONE! Play! Ask Questions!

Resources: Drupal http://www.drupal.org/ drupalib: http://drupalib.interoperating.info/ groups.drupal: libraries: http://groups.drupal.org/libraries Free, 2-hour sandbox site: http://www.opensourcecms.com/cms/drupal/ (user: admin pass: demo)

Resources: Joomla! http://www.joomla.org/ Joomla in Libraries: http://www.joomlainlibrary.com/ Free, 2-hour sandbox site: http://www.opensourcecms.com/cms/joomla/admin.html (user: admin pass: demo)

Resources: Plone http://plone.org/ Install Plone locally: http://plone.org/products/plone