30
Jun
30
Jun
We’ve been doing some research at work into finding a CMS to replace the one we currently have. About two years ago GC transitioned from a static html site to a php-driven, dynamic content management system (CMS). In higher ed, you usually end up with thousands and thousands of pages of web content, more if you’re a large university. And we are no different.
I think Jared said we serve about 13,000 pages or so. And before switching to Joomla! that number was a huge burden for updating. Not to mention there was absolutely no on-demand content creation or display whatsoever.
But here we are two years after and we’re running into the inherent problems with Joomla! in the type of application we’re using it for. Not that it’s a bad piece of software – it’s not. Not at all. It’s just really hard to fit into our plans and needs.
Joomla! is open source. And with that state comes a whole slew of benefits and problems. This leads to the inevitable battle with weighing pros and cons – free vs. slow response and slim support, etc. And for smaller applications, it’s a great CMS. But with the importance of SEO in our line of work, it just doesn’t cut it.
See, we were running OpenSEF, a community-created plugin, to change the long string of php-created url characters to something simpler, like .edu/getajob or something. Everytime a link was clicked, all 13,000 pages were queried in the database to find the one that the SEF url matched – and led to server crashes. A lot of server crashes. Think, thrice a day or more. Pretty ridiculous. So it’s turned off now. And we have ugly URLs.
The organization of the backend doesn’t work for us either. Only 3 levels of content – Section, category, content item. No sub categories, no cross-sectioning of articles. Not bad, just not for us.
So we’re looking at others. One really cool one we’ve found is dotCMS. It’s GPLed but also comes with pay-packages for support. They also have a kit option that comes with a customized server (actual hardware) some addon-apps and setup. It looks perfect for what we’re wanting to do. And a lot of other schools have already started using it with really impressive results.
So. The next step is to convince administration to spend some money.
Do you have a favourite CMS or a suggestion for something we should look at? It needs to be able to handle large amounts of content, not necessarily OSS, but highly configurable.
29
Jun
29
Jun
Jon’s leaving tomorrow. We will follow on Thursday. I am ecstatic about our trip to Portugal. We’re even making it in in time for André’s bachelor party. And we’ll get to see a good bit of the area.
I do wish we could stay longer than a few days. We’re taking a train from Porto to Lisbon on Sunday and then flying to Dublin on Monday morning. So we’ll have the evening in Lisbon to get some food and hang out. The train ride will be nice too. Three hours and I’m sure some pretty good scenery. And the food in Portugal will be fantastic.
—
I talked to Danny yesterday on our way to see a movie (Wanted. Horrible film. Don’t see it. It sucked big time). We’re gonna try to do a three-week Ireland trip with him sometime. I’ve got a few good itineraries that I’ve found.
In any case. Foreign travel is beckoning. I’ll be photoblogging as long as I can find a wifi connection (which should be at our B&B)
If you want to see our trip itinerary, go over to tripit.com and sign-up (add me as a contact too!). If you have some ideas or insight into what we should see or do in Dublin, Porto or Lisbon – leave it in the comments.
28
Jun
28
Jun
It was a busy day for me today – Slept in, interviewed a potential hiree for my old position, cruised STL for a while. But I am still working on getting the subdomain up. I might be closer. Hopefully. Gotta say though, shared hosting is not as easy as it should be; especially with GoDaddy.
Anyway, I’ll keep you guys posted. Oh, and cool photos will be uploaded tomorrow after I’ve slept and had time to process them.
Music
Hearsay