E-Media Tidbits

drupal.org Is Drupal or any open-source CMS right for your news org?

Yesterday I wrote about some recent developments in open-source content management system (CMS) options that might be useful to news organizations. I quoted Placeblogger founder Lisa Williams as mentioning the work Morris Digital's Ken Rickard has done with expanding the capabilities of the popular open-source CMS Drupal.

Later I asked Rickard, "Since there's so much activity about news orgs considering Drupal as a CMS, what's your advice on the easiest way for news orgs to decide whether Drupal might be a good match for their needs?"

He replied, "That's a complex question, actually. Drupal (like Joomla and Django) give you a framework to make new tools quickly, with a low barrier to entry.

"Generally when I talk to newspapers about Drupal the two big issues are scalability and time commitment. It's free software, but that doesn't mean it won't cost anything. Of course, each new Drupal release gets better in terms of performance. People should also, I think, go into a Drupal project expecting the site to grow and change.

"Choosing open source is not an easy decision. It puts you on a path with some very real consequences. The basic questions are:

• Do you want your site to be a broadcast (one-to-many) or a conversation (many-to-many)?

• Do you want to experiment with new site features without paying a vendor?

• Are you willing to commit developer resources to maintaining an open-source project?

• How scalable must your CMS be? Scaling Drupal is not a trivial task, and the issues with hosting and availability should be seriously considered by a newspaper's technical staff before committing to the platform. We didn't do this part right with SavannahNow and it is still causing some pain in the organization.

• Are you constrained by a strict 'print edition' concept of online publishing? Do you want to be?

• Do you think collaboration creates better journalism and openness creates a freer society? (That's really a philosophical point for using an open platform.)

"Depending on the answers, Drupal may or may not be suitable for you. Here are a few posts from long ago that explain my position: Why Drupal?, Tech Notes (June 4, 2006), and Drupal and the enterprise.

"I usually boil it down to these statements:

• Out of the box, Drupal and Joomla will do 70 percent of what you think you need.

• How important is that additional 30 percent to you?

• What resources can you devote to this project?

"And finally: If you aren't willing to give back to the open-source community, you should just buy software from someone who will offer you a service-level agreement (SLA).

"I reported the following to my management team last year after attending my first DrupalCON in Vancouver: 'If we are to go forward using Drupal, we need a dedicated support-and-development team of three people. The team lead will have, as one of his/her main responsibilities, the task of being our public face within the Drupal community.'

"I'm still [Morris Digital's] public face to the Drupal community. I frequently speak to Drupal developers as the stand-in for large companies when we have development debates. I'm also a Google Summer of Code mentor for Drupal."