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.
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
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
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.
We spend a lot of time talking about content management. There should really be a topic for it.
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.
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.
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.
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