[OT] Experience with getting participation in school web site by teachers

[Raymond Cote]

Dan Jenkins wrote:
> I am looking for tools to make it easy for them to update content 
> (broadly defining content) and provide an overarching structure to make 
> it easy-to-find.
>   
Definitely some sort of content management system is the way to go for 
them.

Allows a designer to set up a basic 'looks good' set of pages and then 
they can spend the time filling in content vs. trying to make each 
individual page look good.

There's lots out there to chose from (I see WordPress has already been 
mentioned).
Recommend you look at the security history of whatever you decide to pick.

Our CMS of choice right now is Plone.
Although it tends to be a bit difficult to get set up and configured, it 
is fairly easy for end users to work with. We've deployed close to a 
dozen Plone sites so far and they've been well received.

A few Plone features that may be of interest to you:
- good security
- heavy focus on web standards
- meets Section 508 compliance for accessibility (important for a school 
accepting federal funds)
- supports microsite concept: e.g., each school would have it's own 
site, with a different theme, with security permissions based within 
that site (or, at a high school, you might set up a microsite for each 
department and even various clubs).
- through-the-web image editor for easily resizing images.
- nice WYSIWYG editor
- automatic navigation builder (i.e., create new page and it shows up in 
navigation).
- built-in full-text search.
- ability to do full text search in uploaded files (.doc, .pdf, etc.)
- plus, all the usual features you think of in a CMS.

Like I said, there's lots of options out there. Plone happens to be 
where we've landed after using a number of other options.

Hope this helps.
--Ray