Computers in Libraries 07, Tuesday

Session: Using a CMS to build community: Rhumba with Joomla (B201)

(see http://www.joomla.org/ and http://www.joomlainlibrary.com/ for more information)

The South Carolina State Library, where the speakers are from, uses joomla for its website content management and this is how the set it up.

Joomla is free and open source, easy to set-up and use, separates content from form, portable, and extendable (over 1000 add-ons). There are other large organizations that are using joomla, such as Porche Brazil, SC IT Directors Assoc., and United Nations RIC. If you want to see some evaluation, www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix compares 10 content management systems, so you can see how joomla compare to other cms software.

You can use Joomla as a wrapper around your catalog, or you can imbed your catalog into Joomla/the website.

Redesign process

The stages of the process and some of the lessons learned.

Phase 1:
Did online (survey monkey) and in-house surveys to get broad inputs.
Reviewed current content
Need people not familiar with the subject area to review the so get fresh eyes.
Have a project manager.

Phase 2:
Interface design and review
Process stalled with new director.
Wedsite designer did not understand library’s issues and came up with unworkable website.

Phase 3:
Explored CMS options
Joomla learning curve
Translating graphical interface to Joomla templates
Migrated or rewrote content

Phase 4:
Give staff some time to review new site, but go live soon to force them to use the new site and review it. Evaluate it, the plan for growth and refinement.
CMS makes it much easier to evaluate the depth of your content. It also helps by making a site map.
Send the web administrator away so people use it and talk amongst themselves so they learn it.
All is done/based on CSS so it is 508/accessability compliant.

Before this process, they had a homepage committee, a PR committee, and a web administrator. Now they have 2 web managers, 25 authors, and 325 registered members with 130 yet to be approved.

Joomla template has three parts: index.hph, template­_css.css, images, and templatedetails.xml

Staff can add content thru a browser add-on that is WYSIWYG, and which provides pre-defined content formatting. Joomla also reinforces accessibility guidelines so no matter who is writing, it will be compliant.

Joomla seems to be a great tool, but both presenters warned that it has a steep learning curve and the integration was often frustrating, but worth it. So if you have time but no/little money, Joomla could be for you.