Hi all

I think that the best CMS does not exist, but that it is one that meets all
your criteria be that technology, cost, platform, skill set, team size etc
etc but I just wanted to share a few personal notes on the CMS we run -
TerminalFour Site Manager.

It turns out that the CMS we picked is exactly how I would imagine one to
be. So much in fact that I actually built one to very similar principles for
one of my earlier roles involving a project with the NHS.

For me one of the main strengths is the way you can separate design and
content so easily using the content types and page layouts. I know some of
the users of this and other CMS systems prefer a different approach to me,
sometimes they like to build the design aspect using content types, others
prefer to use the page layouts to handle this and leave the content types
more about, well content. 

But to me that is one of the beauties of this CMS, it gives you the ability
to tailor it to how you and your team would build rather than prescribing
one method.

I am sure lots of others do this though so I am ruling out any bias; an old
unloved (never seems to get a mention maybe because of the support) CMS that
I see a lot of similarities with, called ModX does the exact same (smarty
php tags v's t4 tags v's WP short codes ....).

It still does depend on the criteria for your specific brief though, so it
is a hard discussion to have and of course it gets clouded with your own
experiences good or bad about how you relate to a product, but I think I can
safely say I am in the positive camp with this particular one after using it
daily almost for 4+ years.

Not sure that has helped in any way shape or form, but if anyone wants to
know anything more specific then please do email. I will be at this year's
user conference at the end of the month also so please track me down.

Few little stats,  with a team of around 3 or 4 depending we manage: 

Users: 500+
Sections: 46162 with 105330 pieces of content (eek)

Regards

Paddy


-----Original Message-----
From: Managing institutional Web services
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of ALLISON Neil
Sent: 22 October 2013 13:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Content Management Systems

Hi,

I find these conversations about CMSes and how we all find them interesting,
and the topic seems to come up every year or two. I'm not that techie, so
for me the context of use if everything. If I don't understand how a
particular university manages its website(s) and the make up of their CMS
user group(s) then it's difficult to decide how useful the advice to 'use
this CMS' or 'steer clear of this CMS' is.

If we were talking about another kind of tool - say hammers - then the
conversation might sound a little ridiculous. 'I work in a stone quarry and
I find that the stonemasher2000 is really good'. 'I work in a toffee factory
and my hammer is really frustrating' etc etc.

Having said all this, we use Polopoly for a large portion of our site (700+
users, 200+ sites, 80+ units working semi-autonomously) while both Squiz and
Drupal are reasonably popular among major academic units who choose not to
use the centrally supported CMS. Polopoly is fairly powerful and has enabled
us to move the University web presence forward significantly in the past 6
or so years, but the usability is pretty awful and as such we've put a lot
of time into training, support and community. The pace of change and
improvement is also too slow - that's as much down to us and our resources
as anything and not a criticism of the vendor.

A few articles I've blogged about that might be of interest...

Content strategy & CMS development http://bit.ly/12l1TY4 CMS design needs
content strategy http://bit.ly/Rpwj6D CMS users' UX matters
http://bit.ly/XLjDxt


We've just embarked on a CMS project using Drupal and top of our agenda is
delivering a tool that is quick, intuitive, learnable and generally highly
usable for the majority of our web editors who are non-specialist and
time-poor.

Ultimately it's not really the CMS that delivers the quality of the website,
it's the user group.

Cheers,


N

*********************************
Neil Allison
University Website Programme
The University of Edinburgh

0131 650 9513
www.ed.ac.uk/website-programme
*********************************

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland,
with registration number SC005336.


-----Original Message-----
From: Managing institutional Web services
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Hirst
Sent: 22 October 2013 13:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Content Management Systems

Hi,

In general we have always suffered from performance issues with Rhythmyx,
most of which are related to the fact that the content explorer requires the
Java applet to run on the client machine. With recent updates and security
issues surrounding Java (especially on Macs) we have suffered quite a lot
trying to find a workable solution for our content contributors. This is our
biggest problem - I believe that removing the reliance on Java would solve
about 80% of our problems.

We have had a few issues with publishing but it's hard to say if that is a
Rhythmyx issue or a hardware/network issue at our end. It could be a bit of
both.

On the positive side, it does the fundamentals well (revisions, audit
trails, workflow etc) and we have never had a request that we couldn't
technically implement. We've got full control over the code that is
published and the de-coupled nature has been useful on more than one
occasion. 

Percussion were keen for us to move to their new product CM1, but after
evaluation, it isn't the right solution for us so we will be looking
elsewhere.

Regards
Rich


--
Richard Hirst
Head of Web
Communications Office
Marketing and Communications
Queen Mary University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS

Tel: +44(0)20 7882 7894
www.qmul.ac.uk







On 22/10/2013 12:29, "Nicholas Laws" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hi there,
>
>We use Squiz Matrix. I've heard a lot of Unis use Rhythmyx and I'd be 
>interested to know the pros and cons.
>
>The jury is out on Matrix; it can be quite powerful but it's fairly 
>complex to use and some very basic things seem to require 
>near-developer knowledge. It also requires a lot of dedicated resource 
>to get it working and is not cheap in terms of support and training.
>
>Best wishes,
>Nick
>
>Nicholas Laws
>Head of Digital Communications
>
>Information Services
>University of Westminster
>101 New Cavendish Street
>London W1W 6XH
>
>T: + 44 (0)20 7911 5795
>
>E: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On 22/10/2013 12:13, "Richard Hirst" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>We are using CM System (Rhythmyx) from Percussion but we are looking 
>>to change it asap. Nothing identified yet so I would be interested to 
>>hear the feedback from others.
>>
>>Regards
>>Rich
>>
>>--
>>Richard Hirst
>>Head of Web
>>Communications Office
>>Marketing and Communications
>>Queen Mary University of London
>>Mile End Road
>>London E1 4NS
>>
>>Tel: +44(0)20 7882 7894
>>www.qmul.ac.uk
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On 22/10/2013 11:34, "Clark, Nadine" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi
>>>
>>>We have had our current CMS for a number of years and were wondering 
>>>what systems other organisations use and if anyone had any feedback, 
>>>thoughts or experiences that you¹d be willing to share.  Any feedback 
>>>would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>>
>>>Many thanks in advance,
>>>Nadine
>>>
>>>Nadine Clark
>>>Digital Marketing Manager
>>>Nottingham Trent University
>>>Telephone:  +44 (0)115 848 8574
>>>P Please
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