New.Journalism.Review

So you’ve installed Joomla! CMS on a server – well done! But the bare CMS alone isn’t going to be that useful. It really is just an empty shell that needs to be tailored for your particular needs. This process will involve the installation of a template (or perhaps a few templates), working out sections and categories and installation of extensions.

HERE COMES SUPER-ADMINISTRATOR

Sites have a front-end (which is, for the purpose of this explanation, your publicly available site) and the back-end which is your CMS – Joomla!

As we have said before, the art of a good site is to have a  front – end with content that changes regularly and a back-end database stacked full of content.

You don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry accessing your precious database, so you need to have protected

You will be  given super-administrator status (it’s a great title!) when you install Joomla! (you can always change your password). Basically, you can do anything to the CMS, including taking your site offline completely. You can have more than one super-administrator. You can also  give super-administrator status to whoever you want, just make sure you trust them not to mess with the site when they are drunk.

GIVING ACCESS TO OTHERS

To access anything to do with usernames/passwords go to: Site – User Manager - New

Joomla! has two main hierarchies for User Groups: one for access to the
Front-end (so users can log in to the web site and view designated
sections and pages) and one for Back-end Administration access.

The default groups provided are:

Public Front-end
| —- Registered
| ——– Author
| ————- Editor
| ——————- Publisher

Administrator Back-end
| ——- Manager
| ————- Administrator
| ——————- Super Administrator

The front-end bit allows your site to work in some respects as a wiki – so users can edit content. There is the  login form (this may be published by default when you install a template)  which allows people to login to contribute to your site.

Personally, my site isn’t a wiki and I don’t have the login form published. I have my 40 (or so) students sign up for Back-End Adminstrator status. This allows students to do pretty much everthing except change the template or pull the site off-line.

Those looking for a decent content management system (CMS) for a website [quick tip: look at open source before opening your wallet] should check out the current issue of .Net* Magazine [Issue 177 / July].

*Note: The magazine is known as Practical Web Design outside the UK.

It has some good general advice, roughly translated as follows:

1. You probably don't need to bother with a CMS if you have a small site which you don't update very often. Just design it in Dreamweaver instead.   
2. Use a CMS if you're running a content-driven site (e.g. one that contains plenty of news), you do regular updates and/or have multiple authors of content.
3. Avoid outdated and expensive CMS solutions i.e. the type in-house CMS solutions really bad web design agencies love to recommend. 
4. You don't need to spend a fortune. Many great CMS solutions are open source and FREE, but the amount of support varies between products. WordPress is so popular that there are loads of community websites offering free advice and tons of how-to books about it, including a recent addition to the Dummies series. But quite a lot has been written about DotNetNuke and increasingly there are books about Joomla!

It reviewed a large number of CMS, but focussed on five main
ones. [.Net gave the star ratings and I've added a few comments]
WordPress [rated five stars....Bang on the nail, in my humble opinion]
ExpressionEngine [4 stars]
MovableType [4 stars.....looking a bit outdated, deserves two stars in MHO]
Blogger [3 stars...what's this doing on the list?]
Drupal  [2 stars........?????? MHO]

Little space was devoted to Joomla!, a PHP-based solution, and has plenty of fans. It's also easier to learn than the feature suggests.

.Net also need to separate out those CMS solutions which are suitable for creating news-based sites and those which are better for blogs.

But nobody can dispute the .Net view that WordPress is king. It can do no wrong in my view and gets better all the time. Security issues aside, the hosted version of WordPress is great for beginners and when you get round to hosting in yourself – it's just really flexible! It's ideal for blogs, but also can be adapted for  content-driven news sites. See some interesting examples of WordPress uses.

Quick video from Drupal Rocks which showcases some Drupal-based journalism/news sites, the free CMS. Tons of big names are using it, including Playboy in Germany! The video is small, but you can make it full size by clicking on it.

 

Drupal Rocks Newspaper and Journalism Websites from Drupal Rocks on Vimeo.

Xaraya or Joomla? We created our journalism news site using Joomla! CMS. A few weeks ago, I went up to visit BBC Sport Interactive. Having seen the CMS its journalist use, I feel pretty confident that our students are getting a good grounding in ‘real world’ working practices. But I’m just wondering if we should scrap Joomla! and teach Xaraya? 

• Unlike Joomla!, Xaraya is used by large media publishers in the UK [so that gets a tick!]
• It’s free [two ticks]
• Its open source [we like Moodle, we like Joomla!....we just LOVE open source]
• And it has a scary name which I can’t spell.[All good CMS have sinister sound names - my favourite is Tridion, which sounds like the latest nuclear weapon system].

So is this something we should be teaching our journalist degree students? How easy is Xaraya to learn and who offers hosting? Will students be able to spell its name, when they already struggle with Joomla!? That’s J-O-O-M-L-A.

So many questions….