Content Management Made Simple
Content Management Made Simple
Freedom and control seem to be opposing ideas when it comes to open source software, however as the Australasian Society for HIV Medicine found, the two could not be more closely intertwined…
Open source software can generate massive savings for some companies however, for non-government organisations (NGOs) with change pockets instead of money bags, they can be manna from heaven.
The Australasian Society for HIV Medicine needed a new content management system (CMS) to drive its website, and it needed one that wouldn’t burn a hole in its budget. Technical Officer Website & Multimedia, Paul Noone was charged with the development of the various ASHM domains, websites, online databases and content management systems; as well as our multimedia resources and online learning. He took one look at the society’s crumbling old CMS and decided right away that open source was the way to go.
Because it is a non-government organisation (NGO), ASHM is heavily regulated by its funding bodies, the State and Commonwealth Departments of Health. This means a lot of reporting and legwork has to go into acquiring funding for projects such as the website, something that by large could be avoided by going open source.
“We provide quarterly reports to them based on our progress with regards to projects which are funded by them,” said Noone. “But we also tackle a lot of unique initiatives for which funding wasn’t initially available or provided.”
These initiatives include providing services to other similar NGOs, so by choosing an open source CMS, Noone killed the proverbial two birds, and did it without having to request extra funding.
“Aside from the organisation’s primary domains we also provide conference and events services to like-minded NGOs, for which a website is invariably required at short notice. To that end I really needed a solution that could get new sites up fast, with a view to passing ownership and management over to the client once our commitment had passed.”
Nightmare On MySQL Street
Before making the switch to open source, ASHM was using a custom, in house PHP3/MySQL solution with a code base that Noone said was troublesome to work with to say the least.
“It wasn’t off-the-shelf, that’s for sure. It was a custom-coded solution that proved a nightmare to develop further, or upgrade with new PHP versions. All linear and nary an object library in site.
“I still keep it live, for historical purposes, and occasionally have a go at upgrading particular sections of it as they fall over. It helps keep me in practice, reminds me how not to do it, and serves as a great reminder of how far we’ve come since then.”
These days, the ASHM website is powered by CMS Made Simple - a flexible open source CMS with a strong community support base and an entire stable of add on features.
“It’s a brilliant little Web app initiated by Ted Kulp and now continually developed by a small but devoted team of developers,” said Noone. “It’s a PHP and MySQL/Postgres solution that’s XHTML-compliant and thoroughly accessible. It also has neat XML core which will facilitate installing and upgrading in the future – just one of its many strengths.”
It fitted in with ASHM’s budget, but more importantly, its community ensures a longevity of development and support that its in-house system couldn’t possibly complete with.
“There was simply no funding for the project,” said Noone. “But with the old CMS dying, I also saw the need to find something more future-proof.
Keen Communities
As it is open source, CMS Made Simple’s development community is constantly toiling away to not only improve the software, but to also produce the litany of plugins and add on features such as calendars, image galleries, newsletters and ecommerce applications.
This kind of community support is important when looking at open source solutions as there is no warranty, and no “dedicated” support similar to what you would find with a piece of proprietary software. Just dedicated volunteers.
Because of this, ASHM took a long look at its system and situation and came up with a list of requirements for the new CMS before it got in too deep.
“Accessibility and simplicity were key concerns,” said Noone. “There was no point getting roped into a solution that was open source only to discover that it output garbage (as so many of them do), or had a prohibitive learning curve.
“Another important factor was the ease by which we could transfer our existing site data across to the new system. The nature of CMS Made Simple made this usually cumbersome task much less painful.”
Before settling on CMS Made Simple, the ASHM looked at almost every CMS out there. No small task when you consider there is upwards of 600.
“We looked at almost every CMS, open source or otherwise,” said Noone. “We had to start setting some serious selection criteria in order to get the numbers down. You wouldn’t believe how many systems there are out there.
“We got down to a core of about 10 and then I proceeded to put them through their paces. Type03, Mambo/Joomla, Drupal, Plone, eZ Publish… to name a few. There are two indispensable sites out there that made that task so much easier – cmsmatrix.org and opensourcecms.com. The first allows you to directly compare a number of systems based on your needs, and the latter provides live demos of many of the open source solutions available. If you’ve ever had to install and configure something like eZ Publish without shell access then you’ll appreciate just what a time-saver this is.”
Redundant RFIs?
An open source solution like CMS made simple also removes the need to perform any requests for information (RFIs) or any other kind of tender process for that matter as all the information is out there, and being free the costs are already known to a large degree.
“We’d already been through that with the last CMS and as I’d offered to tackle it all internally, it didn’t seem necessary to consult with third parties for their opinions or services,” said Noone. “Not every NGO has the luxury of having the in-house skills to do these things, however, and to them I would say – tread very carefully. Of the tenders we received during that time, the prices ranged anywhere from $2-200K. What part of NGO did they not understand, do you think?”
Overall, the things that ended up pushing ASHM towards CMS Made Simple were the flexibility it provides and the community behind it.
“As I am responsible for managing it, I wanted something that had a solid core and an active development and user community,” said Noone. “Support is important and these guys offer it round the clock via online forum and IRC.
“Beyond that I also wanted a solution that I could build on in the future. CMSMS’s extensible architecture allows even soft-core coders like myself to write their own modules and plugins, allowing you to add all manner of functionality to the site.
“Of course, there’s also a good selection of user-provided modules that are already freely available; and functionality like search, sitemap, news/RSS, feedback form, comments and WYSIWYG all come standard.”
Plan Twice, Code Once
When ASHM began to switch over to the new CMS, the process ended up taking around six months with the migration of the old data taking up the largest portion of time.
“I wanted to be sure the CMS’s development was moving in the right direction and that it was continuing at a steady pace first,” said Noone. “However, much of the actual build time comprised itself of transferring the existing data across to the new CMS.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t repeat the mistakes that were made with the last site. That meant getting sign-off on a comprehensive menu structure and overall site layout before any real data could be brought across.
“In the process we also wanted to revise what was there and, in so doing, managed to clear out a forest’s worth of dead wood. The end result is a much leaner, quicker and instinctive site.”
It wasn’t all just a matter of moving the data across though, as problems began to crop up when importing text into the new CMS via word.
I he had to do it again, Noone said he would have: “Insisted, and I mean absolutely insisted, that people not use Word as a means to write site content; or anything else for that matter.
“The sheer amount of time wasted on cleaning up the redundant proprietary code was unreal, even after going through the hassle of saving the files as filtered HTML,” he added. “Seriously, I don’t think there’s a macro in the world that could do it effectively, even though some of the WYSIWYGs try their best.”
Another problem Noone ran in to was with documentation, or more accurately the lack of. Community knowledge of the CMS is very good of course, but a comprehensive text covering all the inns and outs of the system is not so good. For curly problems however, the community is often more responsive when compared to some of the big players in the market.
“I was going to say support [is not as good as it is for proprietary software], but anyone who’s ever tried getting a decent response time out of requests to MS or Adobe/Macromedia understands that’s just not the case,” said Noone. “Also, you’re required to think for yourself a lot more and make informed decisions based on real-world experiences rather than hearsay and so-called expert exchanges.
“That may not seem like a problem but, the feeling of being isolated from your ASP peers and going out on a limb with software they’ve never even heard of, can be a little harrowing at first.”
Everyone’s an Editor
Speaking of harrowing, switching big processes like this is often tough on staff, so getting them to adapt to the new system was also a priority. The new CMS was chosen as it included a straightforward and familiar text editor, giving staff the ability to upload their own content and making them accountable for the sections of the site relevant to their department.
“One of the reasons for implementing an intuitive CMS with a text editor that works in a way they’re familiar with, was so they could be trained in the use of it and start adding their own content - particularly news articles,” said Noone. “Progress has been slow but they’re coming around to it, which is great because I now have more time to focus on pure development, upgrades, and other projects.
“The site’s deliberately news-driven structure probably helped to get that across. Apart from some static content for each page, the rest is sector-related articles, many of which have a short expiration date. That means it becomes obvious pretty quickly when a section isn’t being added to.”
The staff reaction to the website’s new capabilities has been overwhelmingly positive too, with many people becoming completely autonomous now with the content they add to the site.
“The conference team are loving it,” said Noone. “They’re almost self-sufficient now in the area of page and content creation. The plan is to introduce other staff slowly, perhaps one person from each department to handle basic updates and news items.
“There are obvious dangers behind allowing everybody free reign to the CMS, which is where the permissions system for users and groups becomes central. Where once you had to struggle to find the right place for new content (so it wouldn’t be buried), now it’s almost child’s play.”
Everyone’s a Developer
By giving a long lead time to the project, Noone created ample opportunity for department heads to provide feedback with regards to their wants and needs. Sign-off was requested and granted on things like look-and-feel and menu structure from a wireframe prototype. Noone considers this to be a vital pre-development step. One that ensures the CMS is a tailored fit for the organisation, saving time and energy that normally would go into jury-rigging fixes later.
Of course some needs only crystallise when a system is finally in place, and ASHM is no exception here, however thorough planning still saves much time and effort in the long run.
“Some departments had greater needs than others, and some are only now starting to ask for additional features which, had they been implemented at conception, could have saved a lot of time and effort,” said Noone. “There are always going to be things you hadn’t fully considered, I suppose, no matter how well you plan.”
The beauty of open source software however, is as these needs surface they can be simply added to the package by way of a plugin. If a database tool, or specific kind of form is needed for example and it doesn’t already exist, it can be coded up in-house or by the community if willing help is available.
This kind of flexibility, along with its vendor neutrality is starting to make governments sit up and take notice of open source. The British government for example concluded in an October 2004 report that open source is a "viable and credible alternative to proprietary software". While there are no particular policies in place in Australia stipulating that the use of open source must be explored alongside proprietary software, organisations like ASHM are increasingly being drawn towards it.
“It’s all a matter of commerce, isn’t it?” said Noone. “Not that I’d want to move to .NET even if the money was there. For me it was just the obvious choice. I’m a big advocate of OSS and it also provided me with the opportunity to tackle a project I was really in to and learn a few things a long the way.
“Accessibility and usability now focus largely in our website policy; two key ingredients you don’t come across often in closed source solutions."
My, My, MySQL
Going with CMS made simple also enabled ASHM to choose between either MySQL or PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL has historically lead the way over MySQL performance wise, however, ASHM decided to go MySQL given that its data was already in MySQL databases.
“I didn’t want to add possible issues with table conversions and auto_increment values to an already complex project,” said Noone. “There‘s also some well-documented and stark performance differences but I don’t know if they’re as apparent with the latest versions.
“Given that our in-house file server went from Access to MSSQL, it would have offered no synergistic gain either way. It would be great if they could talk to each other though.”
Overall, Noone is keen to talk up the ASHM’s experiences with open source solutions because of two words: source code.
“The ability to take something that almost suits your needs and then modify it to exacting requirements, legally and at no cost, is simply wondrous,” he said. “Imagine if, instead of repeatedly hounding Macromedia for a decent FTP client in Dreamweaver, version after version, you could simply modify the source code to include one? There’s simply no greater power and I’m sure that’s got a lot of the big players pretty scared.
Because it has been so happy with the results of CMS Made Simple, particularly as it has cost nothing but Noone’s time to set up, ASHM has pledged a worthwhile contribution to the project’s continued development. And in true open source spirit, the dev team has left it all in the kitty.