CMS for cross-dept/university project?
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
We use Basecamp for collaboration and project management -- it's not very expensive, and you don't have to get involved in any design or management or maintenance (which will always generate unexpected expenses), though of course you do have to learn the features. There's lots of useful features, including some more detailed project management features such as linking deadlines and reminders with automated postings, shared editing via a writeboard, file uploads, emails to all or selected subsets, multiple projects with different or overlapping members, some simple indexing, customization of logo, etc. --------------------------------------------------------------- Ronald E. Rice Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication Dept. Communication, 4127 Social Sciences & Media Studies Co-Director, Carsey-Wolf Center International Communication Association President, 2006-2007 University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4020 805-893-8696; f: 805-893-7102 rrice@comm.ucsb.edu; http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/rice.php; http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Werry" <cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 12:48 PM Subject: [Air-L] CMS for cross-dept/university project?
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/
*Hi, * * * *Have you tried Joomla? It's also a free open source CMS with more capabilities like shared events, calendars, documents, project management,..etc. In addition to that, Joomla has many plug-ins, both commercial and non-commercial, that is well-suited for building an online community. The web site is:* * * *joomla.org* * * *At my previous organization, we used Joomla to develop a web site for our report which was written by different constituents. You can check it out at hungerreport.org/2009* * * ** --------------- Yen B. Le 202.687.1914 Computer Specialist Georgetown University Center for Intercultural Education and Development http://cied.georgetown.edu CIED designs tailored international education, development, and public diplomacy programs in the Georgetown University tradition 2011/3/11 Chris Werry <cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu>
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/
Chris, If your focus is mainly on collaboration then I would look at one of the many off the shelf tools on the market. Basecamp has been mentioned, I would also suggest Huddle (http://www.huddle.com/) which I've used on a number of projects. Many of these have a free option and / or education and not-for profit licensing. I don't want to put your developer out of a job but there are so many as-a-service options out there now that I would strongly urge to you go for one of those and not to build or even customise much of anything. What's more the on going support costs of Drupal would tend to be more than WordPress as it is a more complex (though more flexible) product. ren On 11 Mar 2011, at 20:48, 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/
Basecamp has been mentioned, and while I love it it's definitely not a CMS; it's a project collaboration tool. Sounds like you are looking for a social community CMS. I would recommend looking at Sakai, Jive SBS, or Drupal. Drupal can be configured to do many things, and there are many University sites run on it. You also might like Sakai, a collaboration and learning tool for educators by educators. http://sakaiproject.org/ I have friends who work for drupal.org and the Sakai Foundation - let me know if you want me to introduce you via email. Regards, Sharon On Mar 11, 2011, at 1:10 PM, Ren Reynolds wrote:
Chris,
If your focus is mainly on collaboration then I would look at one of the many off the shelf tools on the market. Basecamp has been mentioned, I would also suggest Huddle (http://www.huddle.com/) which I've used on a number of projects. Many of these have a free option and / or education and not-for profit licensing.
I don't want to put your developer out of a job but there are so many as-a-service options out there now that I would strongly urge to you go for one of those and not to build or even customise much of anything. What's more the on going support costs of Drupal would tend to be more than WordPress as it is a more complex (though more flexible) product.
ren
On 11 Mar 2011, at 20:48, 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/
_______________________________________________ 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/
Coming to this late so unsure if anyone's mentioned it, but Buddypress is Wordpress's free, OS social networking platform worth looking into too.....
From: human.factor.one@gmail.com To: cwerry@mail.sdsu.edu Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 21:08:43 -0800 CC: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-L] CMS for cross-dept/university project?
Basecamp has been mentioned, and while I love it it's definitely not a CMS; it's a project collaboration tool.
Sounds like you are looking for a social community CMS. I would recommend looking at Sakai, Jive SBS, or Drupal. Drupal can be configured to do many things, and there are many University sites run on it. You also might like Sakai, a collaboration and learning tool for educators by educators. http://sakaiproject.org/
I have friends who work for drupal.org and the Sakai Foundation - let me know if you want me to introduce you via email.
Regards, Sharon
On Mar 11, 2011, at 1:10 PM, Ren Reynolds wrote:
Chris,
If your focus is mainly on collaboration then I would look at one of the many off the shelf tools on the market. Basecamp has been mentioned, I would also suggest Huddle (http://www.huddle.com/) which I've used on a number of projects. Many of these have a free option and / or education and not-for profit licensing.
I don't want to put your developer out of a job but there are so many as-a-service options out there now that I would strongly urge to you go for one of those and not to build or even customise much of anything. What's more the on going support costs of Drupal would tend to be more than WordPress as it is a more complex (though more flexible) product.
ren
On 11 Mar 2011, at 20:48, 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/
_______________________________________________ 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/
_______________________________________________ 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/
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/
participants (7)
-
Chris Werry -
Lawrence Hanley -
live -
Ren Reynolds -
Ronald E. Rice -
simon collister -
Yen B. Le