Slashdot Mirror
CMS for High School Newspaper Website?
wyldeone asks: "I'm responsible for creating a site for my high schools newspaper, and I'm at a loss for what technology to use. It is small, and there will be about one issue a month. I have looked into some weblogging software like MovableType, and WordPress and they seems too simple, but larger CMS offerings (Campsite and PROPS, for example) seem too complex and powerful for this project. Are there any suggestions from Slashdot readers who run high school or college newspapers?"
Bricolage
Used by Salon, MacWorld, etc.
I started working with it for a newspaper website. It's solid, configurable and very open to design.
Like a red-blooded American.
Knock up the prom queen,
And rejoin the paper then.
You can try Mambo or Typo3. They are both great.
But before making a decision, you can check OpenSourceCMS for demo of diferent CMS'. Another great comparison site is CMSMatrix
Personally, I would recommend postnuke.
Biggest advantage is that it will be easy to transition to other people, but also flexible enough to allow for heavy customization. Lots of places offer very cheap hosting, and will throw in a preinstalled postnuke, ssh and ftp access, etc. Check these guys out - I've used them for a couple of years now. http://www.hostnuke.com/
Just my $.02 !
Try Geeklog. Very similar in looks to Slashcode -- has a poll, articles, site calendar, and so on. Geeklog is pretty basic at this point -- all sites tend to look more or less the same 3-column layout -- but very easily themeable (and with a community that makes up for the features it lacks).
I've been researching CMSs recently, and the problem I've come across is that they tend to look similar across themes, and/or their framework is overbroad and poorly documented, making it a monster just to make a few pages.
Really good CMS Features news, portals, lots of themes / looks/ feels, chatbox, forums, calendar etc. It's perfect. www.e107.org www.e107themes.org
Give Drupal a try. It is very customizable, and you should be able to configure it to do whatever you would like.
It is the CMS behind Spread Firefox
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
www.plone.org Easy to install, easy to use, easy on the eyes. Tons of 'products' that install into and provide additional functionality.
Back in the Dark Ages (98-00), when I did the online content for my High School, I just used a simple frameset. Pick an issue, the headlines with in a column down the left, the article was on the right. I wasn't allowed any active content on either server or client, so that was the best compromise at the time. It worked well enough.
"...larger CMS offerings ... seem too complex and powerful for this project. Are there any suggestions from Slashdot readers who run high school or college newspapers?"
I think that what wyldeone is requesting is a CMS that doesn't rely on a high level of ubergeekiness. Presumably he or she is working with a relatively unskilled group. Most of what's been suggested have a big learning curve, and require a willingness to dig into the guts of some pretty idiosyncratic packages.
If he or she is going to set up a system that will endure and be used it will need to be friendly to casual users who change from year to year.
Three Squirrels
Not very complex... not very feature rich, but pretty nice.
use php/mysql and that's it. besides then you're in control of all the code, and you don't get the standart template design
./R My blog
We chose a roll-your-own solution mainly to avoid bloat, but also so that we'd be more familiar with the way it worked. Since you're looking for a CMS for a school, my advice is this: spread the wealth. Your journalism students are getting experience, why not throw a bone to your computer science students as well? Look at some popular CMSs, make a list of features you want (I guarantee that most of them will have a billion features you don't want) and then get some students to write it. That's what we did, and we're very happy with the outcome.
Another one bites the dust
My college's newspaper uses College Publisher. However, I know absolutely nothing about it, including how much it costs.
Personally, I second the suggestion of Drupal; while it would probably take a bit of time to get it to do what you want, it's extremely customizable and once you get used to it, it's very easy to use. Plus, it's free.
Moodle (www.moodle.org) seems like it may suit your needs. LAMP based, easy setup.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Midgard is hard to setup, but easy to use. I highly recommend it. Once you get past the first hump, it's smooth sailing, and easy to use replication administration and all that.
We spend a lot of time talking about content management. There should really be a topic for it.
Who will maintain the site when you leave? If you care about the people after you, think about that! Otherwise, build away :)
Use PHP Nuke. There are a ton of modules for it and it is easy to use once setup. You can even alow people to submit their own stories.
Website
I have looked into some weblogging software like MovableType, and WordPress and they seems too simple
In what regard? I've helped some friends set up WP, and they like the simple-to-use interface, and after adding a few quick-and-dirty freely-downloadable hacks (picture galleries, icon displayers, etc) they're good to go. IMO, this would be a pretty straightforward setup for a high school newspaper. This is especially true if it's going to be run by students, who may want to contribute to the paper, but aren't the most computer-oriented.
Not to disagree with you at all -- it is meant to be simple. I'm just curious what requirements eliminate WP from your consideration.
Using GeekLog. It fell through, in part because the newspaper's advertising contracts didn't allow it, and our literary magazine had enough trouble getting submissions that we didn't have time to set up the site ... but GeekLog itself was very nice. The best part of the project, although that's not saying much.
I use it and is great, open source, PHP, MySQL, easy administration e installation...
Why publish a traditional, monthly school newspaper on the web? People don't read the web that way.
Instead, switch to the slashdot/blog format. Publish articles as they happen, and your audience will connect with your site daily and keep up with the real news as it comes out.
The only reason school newspapers come out once a month is that it takes that long to produce enough material to fill a 10-12 page print newspaper. The web doesn't have those restrictions. Just publish the news on the website as it comes out.
Movable Type or Wordpress should be fine.
Not sure what your requirements are (one issue per month but MT is "too simple"?) but CityDesk is one way to go. Non-free Windows-only binary but it's great software and you don't need anything on the server except FTP. Free trial version, $299 to buy. Sounds expensive until you consider the cost of training. With CityDesk it's "Sit here, type into this thing that looks a lot like Word, and click 'pubish'."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Since it seems you are not looking for a cms but a website that focuses in nothing but delivering news i recomend writing your own cms. I am currently in the process of doing this for my college and i'm finding it to be incredibly easy to do so. It consists of postgresql and php. It supports all the major features one would expect.
If your intrested in taking a look at what i have or perhaps even helping the development process let me know at jjshoe at gmail.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
What are some of the offers for the Free MiniMacs? I'll be watching this spot for a reply and if they arent that bad, I'll use you as a referer.
Every time someone asks about the camparative benefits of CMS packages, it seems like someone has to mention each package out there at least once. So here goes...
I use PostNuke and I found it easy to set up and use. I have programming experience, but was pretty unfamilliar with PHP/mySQL and HTML when I started using this package. I don't run a newspaper site, but this package would easily do the trick. Also, PHP/mySQL are part of most hosting packages out there, so your serve probably already supports it.
It's too bad the site hosting the package sucks so bad...
It sounds like a perfect project for students in the school who study IT/programming. A good IT teacher should have no problems guiding a group of students through the process.
XOOPS should be what you are looking for. It is modular, and you can easily add content, or have people not too computer savvy do so.
...by the way, I'm affiliated with XOOPS, in that I am a community member, mod developer, and translator :)...
Also check out the School module, put together for a school by one of the core dev's - Mithrandir.
It is written in OO-PHP, uses the Smarty template engine, has an extensive community for support, is very simple to install, GPL licensed, and is under constant development.
parrent is submitter of this story.
This was coded by a friend of mine, and its designed expressly for this purpose: http://www.iwebpress.com/
Why not fork?
- poll's
- discussion on anything
- user and group management
- builtin RSS feed reader
- keyword search builtin
- templateable everything (from page till user interface).
Try comparing it to Mambo or Typo3 using CMSMatrix while you are at it.sig not found
http://ez.no/ez_publish
c ti onality
/ is sue_01/focus_format_xml/
It is not just CMS - it is also entire framework to make modules that suit you. And it is easy to make such modules. With standard CMS systems you usualy have some prededifned obvious stuff like news, gallery, poll etc. but it is hard (it forces you to code in PHP) to add custom ones.
Also eZ Publish comes with best of breed features like caching, templates, XML, url-rewrites etc.
Check out its site for details, case studies and so on...
http://ez.no/ez_publish/info/web_publishing_fun
Also if your zine/newspaper is published on paper and different media you probably want to simplify the proces and reuse content on both (electronic and paper) media. So maybe you will be interested in integrating these things with XML. FreeSoftwareMagazine has an interesting article/introduction on this topic:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues
I've used it for several sites, and I expect it might fit your school newspaper model (perhaps multiple contributors to a periodical publication).
The best thing (I think) about Plone is your "users" can contribute rich articles to the site without dicking around in HTML or external editors. It all happens in the browser, any browser.
Server side, it's Python/Zope/CMF which is quite a few layers. It's worth it though, as these technologies are designed for running an object-oriented content system. If that sounds scary, you can just use it like most people and not worry about all that. But it's a powerful framework that can be customised if you want.
And it's got nothing to do with PHP, so right now you don't have the hacking worries from PHP based systems.
Installation and doco are easy, and Plone is free and runs on anything. Another big plus is there are smart people designing the system and the user interfaces. This pays off big when your readers and writers aren't technologists but just want to get the work done.
You get CMS release 6 in the VM/370 distribution here :-)
I'm currently in the process of converting my school's site to Plone. It's easy to install and use. However, it is its own server, so if you just want to run a php application on top of Apache, I would reccomend something like Mambo or Typo3
...duh!
Look at pmwiki.org. it's the most customizeable wiki I've seen yet. PHP running on anything will do it. It's so easy. and about 250k. drop the pmwiki comment "includes" into your html, save it as the template file. add your CSS file too. the whole site will run off of a completely configurable single template file. want to change the site? change the single template file and the CSS file and you have a new look. my site uses it now, and you can create new articles just by using wiki words. You can create your own menu, and link to the stories that way, I really think the story writers will like it the most as they can log back on and fix any changes immediately. just password protect it, it's all in the instructions.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
While we don't currently run any websites for schools, our web management system is probably a good match for your needs, and we'll be happy to strike a deal for a non-profit like a school. Take a look at what we have to offer, prices start at $8 per month, it's simple for even the meek to use, yet it has a very nice feature set.
Tw.o is a poerful CMS and soo much more!! And it's free check it out
Macromedia Contribute is a pretty good CMS app. I've used it for a few of my small clients who need to do minor updates. The learning curve is pretty small.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
...at least, from what I've tried.
The WordPress template is basically one PHP file, which seems ill-equip to handle multiple "looks". But since it's PHP, you can use If/Else statements to change the layout/content depending on the page (main index, archive, a permalink post, etc.)
Take a look at the PHP source Kubrick--one of the more popular WP themes--as an example. It uses If/Else statements to control the content and layout. It's a bit subtle, but permalink pages don't have sidebars, archive pages have meta info in the sidebar, the main page has sidebars but no meta info. So it is possible. You of course don't have to be that subtle, and you change it the way you like it. WordPress can at least handle the "different template" problem.
I am the webmaster for the Davenport West Beak 'n Eye. I was going through the same problem about a year ago. I used http://www.opensourcecms.com/ and tried out almost all of them and none of them would quite do what I wanted. Mambo was the closest. I started using it and I loved it. I did have to modify it to include a second deck and to include captions underneith the pictures, but those modifications weren't too difficult. Mambo has a lot of great features and it will be really easy for someone to take over once you graduate. I recommend Mambo all the way. If you have any questions about the modifications I made, please e-mail me, webmaster at beakneye dot org. Take a look at the modifications here: http://www.beakneye.org/ Tyler
I haven't seen this mentioned yet. WebGUI has it all - it's very easy to use and also very flexible. You can give different groups the ability to update their own sets of pages. There's a huge set of contributors and a very active forum. They also have an excellent demo.
bp
I apologise for this being off-topic in regard to newspaper content management but ...
Like many people (I suspect) I have been looking at CMS as a solution for more mundane administration tasks, specifically for logging changes to servers and services. I work in satellite broadcast television and the effects of even a small change can affect a wide range of staff groups (not to mention 500,000 subscribers). We rely on paper logs and emailed alerts of changes but there is no central web-based solution for placing records of recent changes so that blame can be apportioned when it all goes wrong. Those with a broadcast background may be familiar with the use of Basys newsroom systems to perform this role.
All of the advice I've read here is great but I suspect that many of these products are over-featured for this purpose. Can anyone please recommend a CMS suitable particularly for logging and collating daily reports from logs?
Thanking you kindly ....
Citydesk by the company of software engineering guru Joel Spolsky, would be an excellent choice if you are a) running Windows b) willing to spend a little money.