Arbitrary boundaries, whether geographical or timewise, have existed for a long time and on the one hand, it is understandable that they serve a purpose, but in some cases they seem silly. I understand how we all are energized as we approach Fridays, looking forward to the weekend. In reality why does it because weekends are another couple of days. However, if I took a day off on Wednesday, it just doesn’t feel the same as a Saturday and Sunday, though it really shouldn’t. The same way, Jan 1 of every year is just like every other day. But we all think of it very differently and act that way.
Most of us set up new plans, predominant number of which fail within a few days. Why would we not do it on Feb 1? Or on one’s birthday? It is not the same. In that vein, I would like to look at what is in store for us in 2017, yet another new beginning!
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Our Drupal installation went live on March 29. Drupal is replacing a web content management system called Bluenog. I made a determination when I began at Wellesley that this is yet another technology where we had to make a decision on what is best for us. The choice was either to stick with Bluenog and adapt ourselves and our needs to what the product demands or find a solution that better matches our needs. No single technology ever matches ALL of our needs, so the criteria was to choose something that covers MOST of our needs. We took a look at whether the current CMS is satisfying the needs of the College and it became apparent that in many areas, which I won’t go into detail here, we were struggling.
I had gone through the same exercise at Wesleyan and Pace in the recent past. At Wesleyan, we were very close to going with Drupal, except, it was not as mature four years ago as it is now. To the disappointment of a few open source fans, we chose a product called Cascade, which is still in use there. At Pace, the product in use was Hot Banana (I have no idea how they pick these names) which everyone was struggling with. Once, the product failed and the site was down. We called support in Canada and we were told that we will receive help for the next 10 minutes and if problem cannot be solved by then, we have to wait for the next morning! And at exactly 5 PM their time, the person said bye and hung up the phone! There was no Hot Banana “community” to seek help from. Thankfully, the company announced that they are stopping further development on Hot Banana (it generally means – “it is being put on life support and is being prepared for a slow death”). We looked at Drupal, WordPress and Joomla and after a careful evaluation, chose Drupal.
I used that evaluation as the basis for recommending that we move to Drupal for Wellesley. I should say that we received support from almost all quarters fairly quickly. We then began an implementation plan.
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