CMS: Constantly Moving Stuff

CMS For STRL

Cameron Asbell is the Information Technology Librarian for the Statesboro Regional Library System (STRL) and has been the acting webmaster for the last six months.  Cameron considers herself a bit of a techie and reports that Content Management System (CMS) is well known in her circles.  She prefers the support and features of a CMS to HTML/CSS of years past.  A CMS is easier to use and more appealing for both the users and content creators.  I recently had the pleasure to catch up with her and ask several questions about her CMS.  She was more than happy to share.

The current Statesboro Regional Public Libraries website is designed to provide information about all the branch libraries and their programs, classes, job openings, events, and other “how to” content patrons need to know to access GALILEO and GADD, among other resources.  The STRL system is using WordPress as their CMS with content hosted on Filezilla and a domain hosted by GoDaddy.  The benefits of using WordPress are the support, tutorials, and updates they provide.  Cameron said it was easy for her to become familiar with the system because of the tutorials, help features, and forums which came in handy since she received no training from the prior webmaster.  Another great asset in her arsenal is YouTube; which is used when she runs into something she has never seen before.  The problems she has with the current CMS are not due to the host platform, but rather the prior webmaster.  The current website has dozens of plugins, extensions, widgets, and gadgets that were used in the past and never deleted from the system.  Cameron is hesitant to delete them herself because she is not sure if they control something or are featured on a page she is unfamiliar with.  There are several articles and categories that she does not use, but obviously someone did at some point in time.  In her own words, “I inherited a lot of clutter and would like to start fresh with a very clean minimal website.”

The library has three people with the power and authorization to alter the site: Cameron, the library director, and the Bulloch County IT Coordinator.  As you can probably guess, Cameron is the only one who manages the site.  STRL does not have a system in place to train other employees on the CMS features, nor is it something that is likely to develop in the future.  Cameron designates three hours every Wednesdays for website maintenance and another one or two for social media management.  Overall, she spends about 30 minutes to update content for the following week and the rest of the time involves going through old pages and discovering what was done, if it is still relevant, and if it can be done easier or differently.  During this process she often stumbles across straight HTML pages which have to be downloaded, edited, and re-uploaded to the site in order to be useful.  She often finds pages that have been created in a “bizarre way” which look like an “insane waste of time” to her.  To this day Cameron has yet to understand the thought process of the prior webmaster.

Cameron inherited the CMS from her predecessor and was not involved in the decision making process.  If given the choice she would actually recreate the site using Joomla!.  She likes the support they provide as well as the ease of use provided by the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) functionality.  She has used Joomla! and Drupal in the past and believes Joomla! will be a great fit for STRL.  When asked to describe the perfect website Cameron said, “The simpler the site the better.  Less clutter and fewer moving parts mean less to break.”  One key to a simple site is consistent naming.  In theory, this idea is obvious, but that has not been her experience.  In one story she describes the search for a particular HTML report stored on Filezilla.  A search through twelve pages labeled HTML report revealed nothing of use.  This process turned into a “search every page” task in order to locate the right page which was discovered under the label “monthly maintenance.”  A few rules that Cameron follows in her website maintenance are to name files accurately, discard unused files, and be consistent so anyone following your footsteps does not become lost.  She also wishes to move from GoDaddy to the GPLS hosting service in the near future and maybe around that time she can implement her global domination, I mean STRL website overhaul.

Google Doc

Joomla runs from Tia's House of ....

Victory Is Mine

If you have been following this epic battle then you know the score was tied.  Today, last night rather, I emerged victorious against the CMS that is Joomla.  That being said I am happy to welcome you to ….

http://morris7505.demojoomla.com/

Pictures and a Gallery

Picking up where I left off, the first task today was to add content and pictures to my article pages.  My boyfriend was able to provide most of the images I used; however, they were all different sizes.  As such, Picresize.com became my best friend as I constantly went back and forth, upload and download, to ensure standardization between the pictures on my site (in width if not height at least).  I had more than enough pictures so I decided that they needed to be showcased as well. At first I was going to add a slideshow, but then changed my mind and went with the Gallery menu instead.  I used the Ozio Gallery extension that ties to my Google picture album. -- I also installed JEvents; however, I decided not to use it with my final product.

Banner

One item that eluded me for the longest was how to change the default banner image provided by Joomla, but a Google search later revealed the secret location for this guy.  Once again, I thought about a slideshow to replace the banner, but I have the gallery and did not want to be too redundant or overbearing with the images. I might scare some of you away.  That is why I decided for a stagnant collection of pretty people and beautiful snakes.  Most of these images are from educational shows that my boyfriend and I have performed at the college we work out.

Template

The final step for me was changing the template colors, logo, fonts, etc.  I did not spend as much time with this as I did the other topics because the tutorial is very straight forward for this.  With some of the other items I had to figure it out on my own rather than following the tutorial for one reason or another.

Overall, this process was aggravating and required one very yummy blizzard in order to get through it, but I am happy with the end result.

P.S.

I am so happy to have a weekend in which to work on this site because I have been adding and changing content for several hours straight.  Something that could not have been accomplished during the week.  

Joomla One - Tia One

Ding. Ding. Goes the Bell

I conducted another battle skirmish with Joomla today.  

Friday afternoon seemed like a great time to continue the battle since I have since cooled down.  My progress so far has been to create an idea for where I want the website to go and create menus and articles.  I have not yet added content to these pages, but that will come when I know everything is going where I want it to.  One feature I am happy for is the button that takes us to our live site.  I have refreshed that page so many times today.

My next step will be to add content and pictures.  I think everyone will get a scream out of my topic choice.  The battle was in my favor today as I emerged victorious over the site.  I’m not sure if Joomla likes me more today, or if I’m just getting good at what I’m doing.

The final battle will occur tomorrow after work and I plan to knock Joomla out of this world and finish up my site in order to enjoy the Memorial Day weekend.  I wish everyone else the best of luck with their battle and hopefully we will all be able to breathe a sigh of relief after this is over.  

Cheers everyone.

Joomla One - Tia Zip

Round One

Last night there was an epic battle between good and evil.... I mean Tia and Joomla.  This battle waged for many hours ending shortly after midnight with small victories and defeats on both sides.

This back-and-forth, head-turning, match occurred with no end in sight.  Then, Tia waved the white flag of surrender.

The next round will kick off later today.  Will Joomla prevail victorious again, or will Tia even the score and claim victory over all?

Stay tuned to this blog to find out...

What Happened?

Many of you may be wondering why I was not successful with Joomla on my first day.  I watched the videos for the first 3 or 4 modules; then ventured out on my own.  

What could go wrong right?  

The first problem I ran into was during the set-up stage. This was a minor skirmish and that was quickly passed over between the two installation wizard modules.  The next encounter occurred with installing the two extensions, JCE and Akeeba backup.  This aggravation lasted about an hour and I finally accepted the fact that the Joomla server dislikes my laptop.  I ended up using my tablet to login to Joomla and download the extensions from there.  By this time I was very tired and was feeling defeated but I was not going to stop when I was ready to add content.  This went much smoother, but I ultimately decided I needed to approach this with a fresh brain.  My homepage looks really good tho.