Any high end CMS suggestions?

[Chris Cage]

Howdy Refreshers,

OK, it's another CMS question. I'm looking for a CMS to run an employee portal site for a very large company. The solution does NOT have to be open source or low-cost. It does need to be robust, reliable and scalable.

I don't have any hands-on experience with the commercial systems out there, so I figured I'd throw it out to the group and see if anybody has any recommendations.

Here are some of the starting parameters:

- 300,000 registered users
- 150 individual local "clubs" maintaining their own data.
- About 100 interest categories that organize groups within each local club
- Permission system to handle mid-level admins maintaining their own areas

Calendars of Events
- Events may be club specific or interest group specific
- Users need to be able to add an event to their own calendar
- Search through all events across all clubs and groups

Communication
- Email functionality to alert members of new events, news, reminders
- Discussion forums
- Ability to connect with other members, internal messaging?

Personalization
- Subscribe to/bookmark specific groups or events
- Potentially multi-lingual

Other Items
- Business directory for "local discounts"
- Users may need to be updated regularly though an external file input
- Customizable registration process
- Open framework that can be enhanced in the future for added functionality

I'd appreciate any suggestions folks might have.

Thanks,
Chris

[William C Hayes]

Plone.

--
William C. Hayes
http://thewhitelightsociety.com

[Chris Cage]

Thanks. I've heard of Plone but never really delved into it. I'll take a look.

Chris

[Mike Cravey]

We've been looking into Alfresco, Stellent (now owned by Oracle), Interwoven & Documentum (now owned by ECM). Minus Alfresco, those are the big players in the corporate CMS market.

Honestly though, at lot of the things you are looking for I haven't seen a traditional CMS. It's looks like you may be looking for more of portal product combined with a CMS.

Either way, from what I've seen of the products, be prepared to spend some developer/engineer time to customize these tools to your needs.

[Jon Loyens]

Check out LifeRay:

http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/home

Open source, enterprise Java based and has a lot of the community
features that you're looking for.

Jon Loyens
http://www.thinktiv.com

[Kevin Koym]

i second Plone.

This site:
http://www.tfc.state.tx.us/

is the largest in the state of Texas system- in number of hits and number of pages. I pulled together the team that took these pages and put them into Plone.

For what it is worth- the customer has already changed (screwed up a bit) the beautiful skin that our graphic artist did... so please don't take the immediate look to be a qualification on the artist that originally did the work, etc.


Plone is being used in a lot of high end sites. 

Kevin

--
Kevin Koym
kevin...@enterpriseteaming.com
+1.512.698.9328 mobile

Enterprise Teaming, LLC
http://www.enterpriseteaming.com

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9)

[Paul Menard]

I've heard a lot about Plone these since first of the year. I for one would like to see a demo at a Refresh future meeting. (hint)

Paul

[Kevin Koym]

hmmm... i hear the hint.... but i am at this point only one of those guys that can wave his hands in the air and tell you how great it is. i have pretty much lobotomized my ability to do real technical work... although i was a kick-ass engineer in the day.

so... if anyone can do the real work of showing off plone- i can wave my hands in the air at their side.  :-)

kevin

[Paul Menard]

I'm not looking for a too technical presentation. Maybe just something as simple as a run through the admin area for example. Or maybe someone from the team you pulled together can provide a technical overview. 

P-

[Glenda Sims]

I've got personal experience with Stellent (now known as Oracle Universal Content Management System).  If I had my money to spend all over again...I would not choose Stellent/Oracle.  I'm not convinced that there is an enterprise grade CMS that really "makes the grade".  If you want more details...you'll have to get them over beer.

I'm sure you know about this site...I still find it helpful.

http://www.cmswatch.com/CMS/Vendors/

Glenda (the mosty goodwitch)

--
glenda sims | glsi...@gmail.com | glendathegood.com

[Chris Cage]

I’ve also received some other suggestions that I believe are targeted at building social network/community sites.

 

Ning - http://www.ning.com

 

Dolphin - http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

 

Clearspace Community - http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/clearspace

 

If anyone has opinions or experience with these, I’d be happy to hear about it.

 

Chris

 

PS – thanks for not turning this into a religious war about which is the “best” CMS. I know just about everything is good for something. Figuring out the advantages/disadvantages for a specific application can sometimes be challenging.

 

 

 

From: Refresh...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Refresh...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Koym

Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 12:34 PM
To: Refresh...@googlegroups.com

[Alex S. Jones]

I've added it to the list. If anyone feels comfortable presenting Plone, or co-presenting it with Kevin waving his hands next to you, please contact me off list and we'll set it up as a future topic.

Cheers,

Alex Jones

www.SilverSpider.com

[Gregory Stewart]

My recommendation:

Expression Engine - http://www.expressionengine.com/

Greg

[Susan Price]

I use Ning for managing communications around nonprofits (cub scouts, reunions).

No idea how it performs with a group bigger than 200, but it’s a pretty easy learning curve, very sensible direct URLs, allows easy upload of video and images. Easy to customize, embed calendars, etc.

The high-end CMSes we’ve worked to install in corporate environments are:

• Documentum
• Microsoft Sharepoint
  

Both have huge price tags and other large hurdles. Usability and accessibility are often difficult to achieve with these tools. The salespeople will tell you it’s a slam dunk, but it’s NOT.

The larger questions, in our experience, with any CMS install, isn’t the selection of platform, though of course that’s important. Whoever sponsors/owns really needs to do a lot of championing, training, governance, etc. We help our clients with that.

And fwiw – Rackspace now offers hosted Sharepoint. Sharepoint is often an easy sell to a large enterprise, due to the high adoption and use of MS Office. Documentum works that angle in its sales pitches as well. Familiarity should breed contempt, but often doesn’t – hee!

-Susan




Susan Price
su...@firecatstudio.com
http://firecatstudio.com

studio:  210-320-2391
mobile: 210-872-0445

[Luis Torres]

Haven't used this site in a while but it used to be REALLY good:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

They have demos of tons of apps to do CMS, blogs, e-commerce, etc, etc. Just scroll down and on your left you'll find the different categories.

What I like about the site is that you can log into each tool as an admin and regular user and play around. They wipe everyone's tests at night I think.

Good luck,

Luis

2008/8/7 Mike Cravey <tec...@craveytrain.com>

[Cody Marx Bailey]

I have worked on many many CMS's and have worked with two very large enterprise level CMS's. Plone and Cascade. Plone, as many python developers will tell you is a headache and a half. The foundation upon which Plone is coded is Zope, which is extremely finicky. I spent the better part of 2 years with different consultants from around the country trying to get Plone to operate the way we needed it to and eventually had to cut our losses and go a different direction.

Enter, Cascade server from a company based in Atlanta named Hannon Hill. It's written in Java and uses XSLT/XML for all of it's management of content. The server is really nice and does a superior job.

http://hannonhill.com

--
Cody Marx Bailey
979-574-9199
Downtown Cartel (.com)
211a West Wm J Bryan Pkwy
Bryan, Texas 77803

[dixon1e]

Plone is one option of many CMS systems, but Plone does seem a good
fit for your requirements. In this case, it's also good at the
implied requirements, such as workflow, and the distribution and
management of administrative roles. These are things Plone is good
at, and are often decisive factors in selecting it. As for Cody's
experience, I make the same disclaimer everyone does, every CMS has
its strengths and weaknesses. Oh yeah, and YMMV.

[William C. Hayes]

Agreed. if i was a doctor, i would prescribe plone. If you need any help hosting, configuring or skinning it. feel free to give me a shout.

--
Billy Hayes