I kind of agree with the potential to "beat yourself up" with Drupal. I'm VP of a non-profit online publisher. we use only Drupal and love it. It's capable of so much more than other CMS's like Wordpress. But we keep a full time programmer on staff, have other staff members with some pretty extensive Drupal training, and still hire others for major updates. Drupal puts it all in your hands, which means you need to know quite a bit (or pay someone who does--there are freelancers) whereas Wordpress is made to be much more user friendly. A bit of Internet familiarity and you can work with Wordpress.

Drupal can get you a nicer, and I think much more professional, result and is really awesome archiving data of all types in easily searchable ways. But while it's free and open source, it still takes an investment of time to learn and grow with (or money to buy someone else's time). It's worth it for us. But Wordpress is free, more usable for a novice, and can produce fine results.

From: "Ed Sharpe - Archivist for SMECC" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, November 6, 2015 11:38:35 AM
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Seeking a CMS for Small, Historical, Local Museum

we are converting to  something on the  front  end  that  will look  more  like a  newspaper.   you can beat your self to death  with drupal and joomla  in that instance  or  use  someone tat offers   a maintained    system as a product and  spend  your  time on  content. Just  depends on what  you want it  to  do......
 
now  if   you do roll  your  own  cms  be aware  there are  third party addins and plug ins  that are not secure...
 
ed sharpe  archivist  for smecc
 
In a message dated 11/4/2015 9:34:56 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes:
Hello readers,
I am on the board for the Canton Historical Society, a very small organization. Our Museum is housed in a one-room schoolhouse, and we're completely run by volunteers.

To get us moving onto the web, I'm looking for a good web CMS (content management system), most likely open-source (as we have a very limited budget), for our organization's web presence as well as some historical photos, videos, and archival finding aids. So this had me thinking that a CMS would help solve any problems such as data storage that a typical website creator (like Squarespace) might not be able to handle.

I found a couple useful articles (http://spyrestudios.com/free-content-management-systems/ and http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/free-content-management-systems/) but I wanted to get some input from the professional community. What are some of the pros/cons to Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, etc. specifically for the museum sector? Is there a particular CMS most museum professionals are utilizing? What are some of the specific options I should be considering in selecting a CMS? Am I on the right track? Thank you so much for all your help!

Sincerely,

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Patrick Cox
Research and Evaluation
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Turn on the science: Inspire learning. Inform policy. Improve lives.


Vice-President for Networks
H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online


PhD Candidate, Childhood Studies
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Rutgers




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