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Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems. What Your Mother Never Told You…. What is Static?. “Flat” page Same information to all users No use of server-side scripting or coding to display information (no bells and whistles) Stays constant text, images, and other items are in the HTML. .

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Content Management Systems

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  1. Content Management Systems What Your Mother Never Told You…

  2. What is Static? • “Flat” page • Same information to all users • No use of server-side scripting or coding to display information (no bells and whistles) • Stays constant • text, images, and other items are in the HTML.

  3. Things People Say About Static Sites • Advantages • Quick to develop • Cheaper to develop than CMS • Cheap to host (web.mit.edu is free) • Disadvantages • Requires HTML expertise to update site • Maintaining large numbers of static pages can be impractical

  4. What is a CMS? • A web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, edit and manage a website.

  5. Some CMS Brands • Drupal • WordPress • Joomla • Expression Engine • Plone

  6. Things People Say About CMS Sites • Much more functional website • Much easier to update • Can allow staff or users to collaborate • Control access to data, based on user roles. • User roles define what information each user can view or edit • Can manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material

  7. Is It True? • More functionality = more to maintain • Updates can be frustrating • Need to define a process before collaborating • Need to monitor your users • Need a good practice for organizing content

  8. Challenges…

  9. Challenges • Slower to launch • What’s the site supposed to DO? • Who will design and build it • What if we add one more cool thing… • How the heck do we use this thing?

  10. Challenges • Can’t make changes easily to the design • Need to update templates • Templates may require some knowledge of PHP • Can become quite complex - cascading nature

  11. Challenges • More expensive to develop • Higher complexity • Hard to find good programmers • Different coding skill, not as easy to learn as HTML

  12. Challenges • Money, money, money. Can you pay for… • Design • Development • Training • Hosting • Server maintenance • Application Maintenance • Functionality upgrades

  13. Myths Debunked…

  14. Myth: Save Money with Open Source • CMS Needs to be updated regularly • Drupal updates come out every few weeks, WordPress every few months • Most cases can’t do this in house • Test updates on separate server • Make sure plugins/modules still work • Re-launch the site

  15. Myth: Free Modules Save Time and Money • Plugin/module updates are maintained by user community • Can’t count on a quick response for troubleshooting • Many times they are released with bugs • Need to be updated regularly • Will they still work on your site? • Who will do the update for you? • What if the update wrecks your site?

  16. Myth: Free Modules Save Time and Money • Drupal major versions not backwards compatible. • Modules developed for Drupal 6 will not work for Drupal 7 without recoding. • Security problems • Modules can compromise the site as easily as security problems in the core.

  17. Myth: Easy Content Updates • WYSIWYG editors • Not reliable • Usually don’t have all the features you need • Need to have basic HTML/CSS skills • Structure of the page may not let you add what you want… • Not all the elements of the layout are easily changed without extra coding.

  18. I bet you didn’t’know that you need…

  19. Administration & Moderation • Who is going to create users, maintain roles? • Full access to the CMS, can be daunting • Who will monitor user comments/posts? • What time commitment is involved? • Who has the right to change content?

  20. Training • Who will train the site administrator • Who will train your editors? • Will the site’s admin interface be easy enough to use? • Display certain fields for certain users

  21. Security • Do you need an intranet? • Do you need registered user only functions? • How will administrators/editor log in? • Touchstone – certificates, Kerberos, or CAMS account • Certificates – have to be installed on your machine • Username/Password – diluting the security of your kerb, limits the way you can restrict access to groups

  22. Security • Different levels of security? • Admin • Users

  23. CMS: Multisite environment • How many sites are you going to need? • How will you update them all? • What if they use different plugins? • What if you don’t start with a multisite set up and want to add a new site?

  24. MIT Best Practices…

  25. Hosting • No IS&T-supported solution for hosting on Athena • Be prepared for hosting costs or • Student server down time or upgrades • Need a system administrator • Usually programmers don’t have this skill set • Need a safe hosting environment • Locked, power backup, HVAC

  26. Hosting • Security: Consider the software environment, such as shared hosting, where someone else might have access to your files • If files uploaded to the server need to be private, make sure the server has limited login access and that the CMS is configured correctly. • If your CMS is sharing server space with another application, you may not be able to control who else gets to log into your server.

  27. Hosting • Best practices: have three servers • Test Server • Staging Server • “Dress rehearsal” of deployment • Matches the production server • Tells you whether the world will come down crashing on you when you finally deploy • If you have several applications living on your production environment, you can test to see if there's any negative interaction between them • Production Server

  28. CMS: Backing up your data • Some CMS don’t have auto-back up • Manually download the entire site • Need to know what you are looking for and how to FTP in • If hosted by IS&T, comes with TSM backup

  29. Benefits…

  30. Permissions Granularity • Permission can be given to an editor to manage the updating of a single item of content on a single page of the site. • Permissions can range between single page and whole site access - and pretty much anything in between. • Very granular permissions mean's maintaining control over who is doing what on the site.

  31. Multiple Editors • Many times numerous authors want to contribute to a site. • Administration panel can be configured to store multiple user roles and access • This facilitates the authors to just login and add their contents to the website.

  32. Global Usage • Editors and authors can access a CMS site from any part of the world. • All they need to have is a computer and an internet connection.

  33. Variety of Core Modules • Wont suffer from upgrades to the core • Sample core modules include (differs per cms): • Webforms • Role and permissions management • Categorization and tagging content • SEO friendly urls • Search • Workflow

  34. Community Support • Forums • Chat • Meetups • Usergroups

  35. Thank you (and say “Hi” to your mother) Lisa Mayer lisa@mit.edu Myra Hope Eskridge myrahope@mit.edu Rebecca Asch rsa@mit.edu Yang Gu asphodel@mit.edu IS&T Departmental Consulting and Application Development DCAD

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