CMS Playdom — an Offering to Students and “non-John Blyberg” Librarians

Ok. So maybe you read Karen Coombs’s essay on “Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0” or heard about the amazing things John Blyberg has done in turning your average library website into a fully-functional Web 2.0 integrated blazing super-powered mystify both users and librarians online cool device and you realize somewhere, like a certain goblin named Joshua has wondered that more librarians have to be thinking and understanding more about how a content management system works.

Well, here’s what I’m proposing. I am willing to let some people see what the back-end of Joomla looks like. I know, I know — John uses Drupal, which is also amazing, but Joomla is easier to install for now. I may get into Drupal later, anyway. And besides, Joomla narrowly beat out Drupal for the Open Source CMS Award. In my view, Joomla is better in one way [easier back-end interface] and Drupal is better in another [easier for coders to customize] — but that’s another whole blog post.

Here is my commitment. I am willing to let a maximum of 20 people see and ‘play’ with the backend of a Joomla-powered website on a test-server. You will get:

1. An “administrator” (not super-administrator) account.

2. Some limited willingness on my part to share some tips on how it works (via IM or otherwise).

3. Some willingness on my part to re-install the system if you manage to blow it up.

4. General forgiveness for #3 so long as you aren’t a hacker doing it on purpose.

5. Perhaps a look at some other CMSs like MediaWiki, e-Collab and zencart [and maybe Drupal].

What do I need from you? Just the following:

Send a name, institution name, desired username and some way for me to confirm that you are a librarian or library student at the institution you mention to ryan [underscore] deschamps123 [at] yahoo [dot] com.

That’s it. That’s my contribution to the library world. If I get lots of replies, my priorities will go this way:

1. Local first, then global. (Slow library movement stuff, ya know?)

2. Small libraries, then medium, then large.

3. Students first, then new librarians, then curious seasoned librarians.

That’s it! Just let me know.