Quick answer: I'd recommend, just as soon, not switching to a CMS.

I managed a CMS conversion and wound up switching back after a couple
of years. It turned out that when it came down to it, the technical
hurdles involved in managing HTML were minuscule compared to the
challenges of writing good web content and doing somewhat sane
information architecture.

Doing the edits we *did* want was somewhat more clumsy (those WYSIWYG
editors are a little flakey and markdown is limiting) and making
content look the way we wanted was more trouble than it had been with
Dreamweaver.

If you've got a really dynamic site with a bunch of logic, a CMS might
be your friend... but if you've pretty much got a static site, don't
just migrate to a CMS because they're all 2.0 and stuff. Your energy
may be better spent coming up with good, clean semantic markup and
clear stylesheet rules that your staff can use.

Cheers,
-Nate

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Moody, David (dam8u)
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Quick polling question. Hoping to get response from my Code4Lib friends.
>
> We are looking to rollout an open source CMS for our public medical library web site and was interested in getting your individual opinion. We do not integrate with our ILS.
>
> I will compile the results and send them to the list, so; you can reply directly to me if you want. Here is the short list:
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> CMS                     |Are You Using it       |Rating (1-10) 10=best, 1=worst
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Drupal          |       yes/no  |       |
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Plone                   |       yes/no  |       |
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Expression Engine       |       yes/no  |       |
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Joomla          |       yes/no  |       |
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Other                   |       yes/no  |       |
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME TOO:
>
> Many Thanks!
> David
> ******************
> David Moody            "email is for old people" - high school student 2006
> Claude Moore Health Sciences Library Webmaster
> [log in to unmask] , tel: 434-982-3648, mobile: 434-989-5481
>
> UVa Health System
> P.O. Box 800722
> Charlottesville VA 22908
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Mark Jordan
>> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 2:57 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Integrating OCS and Drupal
>>
>> Hi Lisa,
>>
>> I'm cc'ing the drupal4lib list in case anyone there wants to jump in.
>>
>> Depending on what level of integration you're after, it would pretty
>> straight forward to write a Drupal module that reads data from an
>> instance of OCS and displays it in a block, for example. A common
>> strategy in Drupal development is to connect to an external database
>> using the db_set_active() function (see http://drupal.org/node/18429
>> for detail), populate the Drupal block, and then switch back to
>> Drupal's default database. Of course, you'd have to write SQL to get
>> the desired data out of the OCS tables but that shouldn't be very
>> difficult.
>>
>> Also, the new Drupal Views2 API should let you do this in a more
>> sophisticated way than straight SQL can (see
>> http://drupal.org/node/235062#comment-1050295 for an example), and now
>> that the Views2 module has been officially released, this approach
>> might be worth investigating.
>>
>> If you want to do more than just read data from OCS into your Drupal
>> instance, you'd have to do more work than what I describe above. Since
>> OCS does a lot of workflow management, I'd caution against injecting
>> data into the OCS database that could cause problems with workflows or
>> submission status. Check the OCS/PKP support forums, and post questions
>> if necessary, before using an external application to update the OCS
>> database.
>>
>> All that being said, can you provide more detail on what you mean by
>> 'integration'?
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> Mark Jordan
>> Head of Library Systems
>> W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
>> Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
>> Voice: 778.782.5753 / Fax: 778.782.3023
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>> ----- "Lise Brin" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> > Have any of you done any work integrating OCS (Open Conference
>> > Systems)
>> > with Drupal?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > **************
>> >
>> > Lise Brin, MLIS
>> >
>> > Emerging Services Librarian
>> >
>> > St. Francis Xavier University
>> >
>> > PO Box 5000
>> >
>> > Antigonish NS
>> >
>> > B2G 2W5
>> >
>> > Phone (902) 867-3669
>