[Air-L] CMS for cross-dept/university project?

[Lawrence Hanley]

Chris,

Caught your post to AIR-L.  CUNY's DHI is a big implementation of Buddypress - - but it is possible to start small and build up.  Here's the Buddypress install http://www.democraticvistas.net/community/)  I am using for one of my lit classes this fall - - the students are "building" a digital textbook, and the Buddypress site is the place where we organize groups, students share, collaborate, etc. 

This was my first (solo) install/implement of Buddypress - - it's a great platform and a cinch to install and start modding. The students are really digging the site as well and have mastered its fairly intuitive interface quickly.  There is also a great community of developers to draw on for ideas, extensions, problem-solving as well.

Hope all is going well . . .

Larry Hanley
San Francisco State University

On Mar 11, 2011, at 12:48 PM, Chris Werry wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Was hoping someone on the list might be able to offer some advice on CMS
> choice.
> 
> We have a common book program on campus. The writing program and some
> departments teach the same book in order to foster conversation and community. There is
> interest in expanding this so 4 or 5 other universities/colleges in the area also participate.
> 
> Folks on our campus want to set up a CMS to help make this happen. I'm
> trying to help with some of the planning. They want a CMS that can be used to coordinate events
> and speakers, upload shared teaching resources, and perhaps leverage some social media
> tools to build community. But nobody involved has much technical expertise,
> and...I'm not sure they really know what they want to do with the site.
> 
> Early on I showed them some drupal sites, but some of our partners weren't
> too familiar with this, and at that point we didn't have any tech people to help with drupal. So the
> conversation turned to Wordpress...I showed them more model sites, including CUNY's Academic
> Commons, which they really liked. But of course a group of developers put a lot of effort
> into this. So it would be no simple feat to attempt something similar.
> 
> We now have one developer, and as it turns out she's most familiar with
> drupal - although she can also build Wordpress sites.
> 
> So my question is, does anyone have any recommendations? Perhaps some model
> sites or distributions of drupal? (Has anyone tried openscholar - I suspect it may
> be too focused on building individual faculty sites). Or a Wordpress site that fits the
> bill?
> 
> One final thought. The folks running this do have some money, so if you've
> been involved in a customization of drupal or Wordpress which could be reworked and re-themed
> by our developer, they might be willing to pay for 'consulting' etc.
> 
> I'm interested in this main because I'd like to see such platforms created
> for our writing program, in order to support some of the work we do across
> departments and with outside groups.
> 
> Any advice greatly appreciated.
> 
> Chris
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