Publishing on the web using Dreamweaver may be fine for individuals, but when it comes serving a group of users with their own needs and timelines it's a model that fails miserably. The esoteric minuitae that comes with the old-fashioned web publishing model is simply too much for those not so inclined to learn in the first place and the bottleneck of having a central webmaster handle all the changes poses its own challenges. Since I was first employed at the School of Journalism & Communication, I've dreamed an easy to use, put it up on the web yourself style of solution. That dream has become a reality thanks to the popularity of blogging and the efforts of many, many programmers out there, many of whom do their work for no money and almost as little recognition.

Our effort to deploy a content management system began over two years ago when faculty member Mark Blaine approached me needing an easy to use web publishing environment for some of his courses. For us at the University of Oregon, web publishing is a low bar to reach: the bandwidth is already there, it is plenty and it is effectively free for us. All we needed was to supply the service. With wikis being all the rage at the time, we first tested the waters using Dokuwiki, which is a very respectable open source software package. It met many of our basic needs but it was clear that 1. we couldn't run the entire SOJC website using it and 2. our needs differed from its capabilities (specifically needs for better WYSISYG editing, more powerful access control and more structure within in the site).

After doing more research and a great deal of test-driving, we settled on Plone, an up-and-coming (if not arrived) star of the open source content management world. There was a lot of back-end work to make it fly (as with many software applications that make it easier for end users to do their jobs), but over the months of testing we've found uses for the software and features within the software we didn't anticipate to begin with. Working with a software package that closely for that long is really like having a relationship with a person-- you really get to know its strengths and weaknesses-- and despite the fact that I've been having this "fling" with Plone now for over a year, I'm still enamored with it. Not a week goes by without it reminding me of how powerful and capable it is.

I learned long ago that great ideas are just ideas until they're implemented and then they're not great until they're implemented well. I can't take credit for the implementation here, only the idea. The hard, in the trenches work was done my system administrator Ryan Stasel and webmaster Louie Vidmar. Without them, you wouldn't be reading this here and it wouldn't look anywhere near as good as it does now. Thanks guys.

And here's to many, many more happy months living with Plone.