Hello,
There’s some good information there. I would mentioned briefly that as Cecelia noted YouTube is a great place to host your videos for linking to your site or various online uses; however, it’s not a storage solution as your videos are converted to their current format and may be hard to pull out for offline use. It’s been some time since I’ve uploaded to YouTube so this may have changed but I wanted to throw that out there.
William Shepherd
Collections Officer
Swift Current Museum
44 Robert Street West
Swift Current, Saskatchewan
S9H 4M9
Phone: 306-778-4815
Fax: 306-778-4818
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CECELIA OTTENWELLER
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2015 3:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Seeking a CMS for Small, Historical, Local Museum
Cecelia Ottenweller
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
713-302-2793
On Nov 6, 2015, at 2:28 PM, CECELIA OTTENWELLER <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Mekie
I’ve been watching this thread with interest.
I used to be a “creative hitman” for an agency that builds enterprise-level websites, really big ones. That experience taught me a lot about the design side of things, but I’m a little rusty on the technical aspects.
the first thing I want to tell you is that a CMS is a content management system that allows you to build a site, but not necessarily store things. It only has so much storage space. If you have a collection of digital items, then it might be a good idea for you to investigate other resources. For clients that had large collections, we advocated a document management system or DMS, that was housed on its own server.
As for your site, I’ll tell you that, when I became the co-president of the Houston History Alliance, one of the first things I did was build us a new website because our existing one was not so great.
I chose Wordpress. I made this choice after talking to the techie at our firm and he told me that, since we were small and broke, Wordpress was our best option because there were so many modules that could be plugged into it for advanced functionality. There’s also a huge community of users out there - supporting the site is essential and to have it be on one person’s shoulders is not a good idea. Wordpress’ ubiquity meant I could find others to help me maintain the site.
I sprang for the Kause template. You can see it here: www.houstonhistoryalliance.org<http://www.houstonhistoryalliance.org>
Many many MANY Wordpress Youtube videos later, I got the *&^%ing thing up. I learned a heck of a lot about Wordpress in the process. But, more importantly, I learned a WHOLE heck of a lot about what I needed to help with.
Here’s what I know:
1. It’s easy to build a simple site. It’s not easy to build a simple site that is found, leveraged, visually appealing, and useful. That takes more than the average bear has in their toolbox.
2. SEO is MUCH more than keywords! Google will ding your site and rank it lower if it is not mobile optimized. It will also ding you for not having a technically optimized back end and this is not easy. I therefore built the site then hired a firm on retainer ($400 a month, 4 months, upon board approval) to optimize the site and make recommendations on how to achieve better rankings.
3. I found an absolutely wonderful online graphics tool called Canva!! I cannot recommend this highly enough! I designed our flyer using the tool and it makes me look like a pro! I’ve attached the flyer here for you to see. Plus, they will create a business account for nonprofits for free!! That was very cool to learn. I use it to manipulate images for the site.
4. Leverage a private youtube channel! It’s a great place to store your videos. Simply use a link to the video in your site.
As you’ll see looking at our site, there’s still lots to do, but I think we’re in pretty good shape given where we came from.
(I was going to attach the flyers but the Museum List rejected the email. Privately email me if you’re interested and I’ll send them!)
If you’d like to contact me directly, please feel free to!
Best,
Cecelia
Cecelia Ottenweller
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
713-302-2793
On Nov 4, 2015, at 8:51 AM, Mekie Kukan <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
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,
Mekie Kukan
Vice President
Canton Historical Society<http://www.cantonhistoricalsociety.org/>
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/CantonHistoricalSociety/>
LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/mekiekukan>
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