redesigning lclark.edu

October 2007

Content Management Systems (CMS) and Trillium

What is a CMS?

A content management system, or CMS, is currently the best technology to assist any large organization with the management of its web presence. While there are other advantages, at its core, a CMS possesses two important features:

  1. the ability to distribute the authorship and management of sub-sites and/or individual web pages across the organization in a manner which does not require a significant knowledge of all the acronyms of web development; and,
  2. it allows for easier re-distribution and re-purposing of all kinds of content, sharing if you will, of the content in a dynamic manner.

An example situation of the above two advantages could be phrased as follows: the events calendar is the central location for all events. However, in the case of a specific lecture, we might want to see it in the main events calendar, but also be able to give one or more department sites the ability to display it, or perhaps a student group might want to see the event listed on their site.

In both sites, it is the site editor’s choice as to what content they choose to form the messages that their site delivers to the community at-large, and they both have the opportunity to share information, without any duplication of work.

Trillium

While Trillium does not easily share content, it is in fact a simple CMS. Trillium grew up out of the same need to distribute authorship that has since created what is now the CMS industry. What has happened since that time, is that Trillium hasn’t kept up with the industry, and many of the features that are available in open source and commercial software are missing from Trillium. As such, Lewis & Clark is at a crossroads with the management of its web presence and has the opportunity here to choose which road to take.

CMS Assessment

To find the best route, there will be a full assessment of our content management system. At present, Trillium is meeting many of the current daily needs of our web site editors, but lacks a number of administration tools and does not adequately incorporate current nor future technology. (This is not surprising, since the Trillium core was written before the wider acceptance of open standards.) This assessment will help us determine the best course of action moving forward. All options are on the table, but the most likely avenues include:

  1. rebuilding Trillium from the ground up adding additional features — this is essentially creating Trillium version 2.0;
  2. utilizing an open source CMS and building L&C modules atop its framework to customize it to our use; or,
  3. purchasing a commercial CMS, and again altering it to our use.

In each of the above cases, there will be a balance formed between the explicit up-front costs (as in commercial software) and the implicit post-purchase costs (all of the avenues) of both importing and deploying the CMS.

With both the open source and commercial avenues, we may have additional resources available, as in a community of developers or other colleges and universities that have already created add-on software modules that we can use/adapt.

CMS Goals

To adequately assess any CMS, we will need to form a prioritized list of goals, features, or functions that will help us determine the correct direction. While not yet created, it will include such items as: the ease-of-use the CMS provides to individual web site editors, the ability to handle new forms of content, like podcasts, and use open standards, so that we know we can adapt it in the future to the “hot” communication vehicle yet-to-be.

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