People who were at the Gates Summit may remember that Doug Robinson, from the National Assoc. of State Chief Information Officers, mentioned that libraries could easily set up their own websites using Drupal (Content Management System) and webhosting (about $50/month) Henry Stokes quickly reminded everyone that public libraries in Texas can use Plinkit (based on Plone), which the Texas State Library is hosting for free. So it is even easier to set up and maintain library websites in Texas -- contact me or Kam McEvoy if you would like to get started, or re-started with your own Plinkit web site. At the risk of causing your eyes to glaze over due to too much techno-jargon, here is a bit about why Plone (the CMS software under Plinkit) is better for the content provider (aka the library staff) that Drupal. Holly Gordon Technical Support & Network Systems Specialist Central Texas Library System, Inc. 1005 West 41st Street, Suite 100 Austin, TX 78756 512-583-0704 ext.15 www.ctls.net <http://www.ctls.net/>
________________________________ From: Tom Ceresini [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 10:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Plone vs. Drupal Here is my recent response to the question, "Why Plone and not Drupal?": I don't have direct knowledge of Drupal, although I understand that it's a very good open source CMS. I have heard a description that I think speaks directly to this question: Drupal is relatively easy to deploy at an administrative level, at a cost of being comparatively difficult to use from the perspective of the content provider (i.e., the "power user" of the system). Plone (the CMS on which Plinkit is built) is relatively more difficult at an administrative level, but is simpler to use for the content provider. For a single site, Drupal would likely be the best fit - it's easier to implement, and the admin/content providers are either the same person or close to one another. The more sites you try to support, the more the equation shifts to accepting more complexity on the admin side for the considerable benefit of greater simplicity on the content provider side. In the case of Plinkit, the libraries will be almost purely content providers, and we'll be the admins. We can learn the systems well and handle the complexity, and increasing the ease of use at the library end means fewer support calls and end-user frustration. Having said that, I hope it's clear that I'm not dismissing Drupal (or Joomla, a similar open source CMS). If I were building a CMS-based system for which an individual customer would serve as both system administrator (i.e., a non-hosted service) and content provider, I might well choose Drupal over Plone. As a general rule, and based on what I've learned so far, I would tend toward Plone as a system grew larger or more complex. I'll be curious to see other opinions. Best regards, Tom TOM CERESINI Library Technology Coordinator LYRASIS [email protected] 3000 Market Street, Suite 200 Philadelphia, PA 19104 D 267-385-3113 T 800.233.3401 F 215.382.0022 www.lyrasis.org NELINET is now part of LYRASIS, Advancing Libraries Together
