Chris, Caught your post to AIR-L. CUNY's DHI is a big implementation of Buddypress - - but it is possible to start small and build up. Here's the Buddypress install http://www.democraticvistas.net/community/) I am using for one of my lit classes this fall - - the students are "building" a digital textbook, and the Buddypress site is the place where we organize groups, students share, collaborate, etc. This was my first (solo) install/implement of Buddypress - - it's a great platform and a cinch to install and start modding. The students are really digging the site as well and have mastered its fairly intuitive interface quickly. There is also a great community of developers to draw on for ideas, extensions, problem-solving as well. Hope all is going well . . . Larry Hanley San Francisco State University On Mar 11, 2011, at 12:48 PM, Chris Werry wrote:
Hi,
Was hoping someone on the list might be able to offer some advice on CMS choice.
We have a common book program on campus. The writing program and some departments teach the same book in order to foster conversation and community. There is interest in expanding this so 4 or 5 other universities/colleges in the area also participate.
Folks on our campus want to set up a CMS to help make this happen. I'm trying to help with some of the planning. They want a CMS that can be used to coordinate events and speakers, upload shared teaching resources, and perhaps leverage some social media tools to build community. But nobody involved has much technical expertise, and...I'm not sure they really know what they want to do with the site.
Early on I showed them some drupal sites, but some of our partners weren't too familiar with this, and at that point we didn't have any tech people to help with drupal. So the conversation turned to Wordpress...I showed them more model sites, including CUNY's Academic Commons, which they really liked. But of course a group of developers put a lot of effort into this. So it would be no simple feat to attempt something similar.
We now have one developer, and as it turns out she's most familiar with drupal - although she can also build Wordpress sites.
So my question is, does anyone have any recommendations? Perhaps some model sites or distributions of drupal? (Has anyone tried openscholar - I suspect it may be too focused on building individual faculty sites). Or a Wordpress site that fits the bill?
One final thought. The folks running this do have some money, so if you've been involved in a customization of drupal or Wordpress which could be reworked and re-themed by our developer, they might be willing to pay for 'consulting' etc.
I'm interested in this main because I'd like to see such platforms created for our writing program, in order to support some of the work we do across departments and with outside groups.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Chris _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/