Morgan & Gao: Using a CMS to Build Community– Joomla

Notes from the session…

South Carolina State Library—Catherine Buck Morgan, Tao Gao

Joomla in libraries website—http://www.joomlainlibrary.com/home/

Reasons SCSU chose Joomla: Reliable, Easier than drupal, Used internationally, multilingual strong support community, continuous improvement (open source community development),

Drawbacks– doesn’t integrate w/ opac yet, but can use wrappers to embed, or link directly into new window

Use cmsmatrix.org to compare systems

Google search trends—mambo peaked in 2005 (rebranded to joomla), joomla’s increasing, drupal and plone staying at same level

SCSU went from static html, table-based layout, dead pages, basic perl scripts, no persistent nav, inconsistent style, not interactive, growing fast without oversight

Wanted Section 508 standards compliant, intuitive, interactive, collaborative, searchable, community-oriented, pushable, dynamic site

Used survey monkey for survey, best feedback from open-ended questions, used people from outside subject areas (fresh eyes) to review pages

Needed designer that understood libraries

People flipped out at first, but were happy in the end—CBM took the day off, monitored email, im

Streamlined admin, but opened up content creation (more authors)

Server specs, tutorials in powerpoint presentation (at joomla in libraries)

Wsiwyg editor, predefined styles for headings, etc., file handling, image management