Intro and CMS question

Micah Bazant

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Oct 16, 2007, 7:23:00 PM10/16/07

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H everyone-

I’m new to the list so I thought I’d introduce myself.

My name is Micah and I do design at the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, as well as working with various other social justice projects. I wasn’t able to make it to the last event, but hope to meet some of you next month.

I have a question about CMS’s. I am working with a couple small groups right now to design and build their simple websites, and obviously they would like to be able to update content themselves. I know Dreamweaver etc., but not Drupal or Joomla, etc. I started dipping my toes into learning them, and was a little intimidated. In general, I’m more visual-oriented then code-oriented.

This seems like its probably a common challenge for freelance activist/designers, and I’m wondering if/how other folks on this list have addressed it. Did you teach yourself how to setup a CMS, and if so, which one and how? Did you find coders to collaborate with? Other solutions?

Thanks for your help!
Micah

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Micah Bazant
Communications Designer
Movement Strategy Center
1611 Telegraph Ave., Suite 510
Oakland, CA 94612
ph: 510-444-0640 x309
fx: 510-251-9810
www.movementstrategy.org

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Innosanto Nagara

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Oct 16, 2007, 7:31:44 PM10/16/07

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Hi Micah,

We don't set up CMS in-house. We learned enough to tweak wordpress for a blog-based fake cms. But building from scratch is more than what we wanted to do as designers (may get a coder on staff at some point, but it's pretty different type of work, and requires a commitment to building standard tools and spreading it over clients to make it affordable).

So we partner up with CMS providers. Tumis has a CMS. We also use Radical Designs' AMP for bigger projects. Reach and Teach's Activist Toolkit for midsized to large projects. Battleborrough Collective also has a nice drupal based CMS. And there are freelancers we partner with. But basically, we separate the design from the backend, and put together a team bid on projects that need a CMS (which is most sites now). Another piece is the information design. We can do an ok job ourselves, but when the groups can afford it, there is no substitute for bringing on someone with internet strategy and marketing experience.

Hope that helps.