CMS Profile: OU Campus in Action

For this week's assignment, I chose to follow up with the topic of a previous post and investigate the transition between my library's current website development tool, Adobe Dreamweaver with a tiny bit of help from Drupal for the library's internal staff Intranet, to the university-wide mandated OU Campus CMS.  As I discussed in my previous post, our website librarian is not too keen on the fact that he was not (and continues not to be) consulted in matters of decision-making and that he will have to submit every change to a higher power in order to edit the website.  I sat down with him this past week and talked to him about this new process and how he liked working with the new CMS.

My questions and his answers are paraphrased for the sake of cohesion and flow.

Me:  Tell me why you were hesitant about the switch over to OU Campus.

[Website Librarian]:  It's nothing personal against OU Campus itself.  In fact, I was already considering switching to a CMS before this process started because it makes it easier to have multiple people working on the same site at the same time.  That's one of the benefits of a CMS - you can set multiple permissions for different contributors so that I can work on more advanced features of the website using code and other librarians who might not be as familiar with web design can still edit content.  We aren't able to do this with our current system, Dreamweaver, which uses mostly code.  So in that respect, it's great that OU Campus allow multiple permissions levels - the problem is that my own permissions are set so low by the university web master.  Here is the chart of permissions level for OU Campus - our web master is the highest, a level 10, and I'm only a level 5, which is in the Editor category.  This means I can edit content, but I can't really manipulate the design or functionality of the library website, which means I have to submit all change requests through the university.  As the library's website manager, I'm essentially going from having complete control over our site to only being able to edit a few boxes.

Me:  What CMS were you considering before the university told you it had to be OU Campus?

[Website Librarian]:  I was considering an open-source CMS like WordPress because I've worked with it before in the past.  I've also worked a bit with Drupal, but found it to be clunky.   

Me:  Any reason you were interested in an open-source CMS over a paid one like OU Campus?

[Website Librarian]:  Well, mostly I was thinking about cost.  But with open-source CMSs you can usually customize sites to a greater degree.  However, third-party modules and extensions add in a wild card element that doesn't always work the way they're advertised to.  With a paid CMS you have a vendor there for IT support, but in essence the functionality is the same as with an open-source CMS.

Me:  Can you tell me about OU Campus' functionality and workflow?  What is its learning curve?

[Website Librarian]:  If you've ever worked with a CMS before, OU Campus is pretty easy to learn.  And considering I don't have very many permissions, there wasn't much for me to learn at all.  Here's what it looks like when I go to edit a page.

I can't alter where the boxes go because that's above my permissions.  I'm allowed to edit anything with a green box over it.  As you can see, I also didn't have any control in how the menu bar for the website will look.  This menu bar is standard on every single university web page, so the library's menus will have to go on the side now.  I'm allowed to add new content to these menus within the range of a few templates.  These are the options I have below.

I can add pages, site sections, and library department pages.  There's only one top level page - the library's main page - so I would never have to add another page like that.  Here's what the "back end" looks like for me.

Here's where I can store elements of the pages before I publish them.  OU Campus has several staging areas for sites before they're published on the web.  In addition, while I'm working on a site I can "check it out" to myself so that no one else can edit it while I'm still working on it.  When I'm done, I can "check it back in" to allow others to edit it.  It keeps people from stepping on each others' toes.  Another feature is the creation of "assets".  If I create an asset, say the Library Reference Chat Box, I can easily add it to multiple pages at one time.  

Me:  This looks pretty user friendly.  Much easier to use than the product we tried, Joomla.

[Website Librarian]:  It is easy to use, but again, like I said before, with my permissions level I am not able to edit any of the HTML, CSS, etc.  If I want to edit something beyond what I've just shown you, I have to put in an order for the university web master - and they won't always approve it.

Me:  Are there any other features of OU Campus you want to talk about?

[Website Librarian]:  Like many current CMSs, OU Campus uses what's called "responsive design" - this means that you only have to design one website and it will work for any size screen or mobile device.  When I upload a picture, I designate it to be "medium" or "large" instead of a certain pixel width.  This tells the program how to resize it so that it takes up the same percentage of the screen no matter how small the screen is.  This feature still has some flaws so it doesn't work perfectly, but it makes it easier to make a mobile site.  What I don't like about responsive design is that it makes scrolling almost impossible to avoid.  With our old website, you could view the entire homepage in one browser window on a normal sized computer screen.  Now, you have to scroll down to see the part on the bottom.  I don't like that.

Me:  Are there any examples of library websites made with OU Campus you can show me?

[Website Librarian]:  Yes.  The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga made their entire site, including the library, with OU Campus.  Georgia Regents University Libraries as well.  You can see that one of the distinctive features of the OU Campus design is the big picture across the top of the page.