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

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

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

4. Disclaimers There is no Silver Bullet Head start on research
Presentation will be available at NW Central:

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

6. 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)

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

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

9. 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)

10. 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)

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

12. “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)

13. “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.”

14. “Content Soup”
Joomla! Demo

15. 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.

16. 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

17. Hierarchical
Plone Demo

18. 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

19. 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

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

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

22. 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

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

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

25. 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?

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

27. 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!

28. 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!

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

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

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