So we were considering WordPress (MU), Omeka, Drupal and Joomla. I’m not particularly well versed in any of these systems, but after some research and a little bit of tinkering, I came to the following conclusions (presented in handy table format). These may or may not be wholly accurate, but are what seem to be the case after my initial research.
| WordPress MU | Omeka | Drupal | Joomla | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-Site | ✔ | × | ✔ | × (needs an extension) |
| Documentation | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ (but confusing) | ✔ (though the wiki a bit confusing) |
| Plug-ins (inc. availability) |
✔ | ✔ (though limited) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Content Types (esp. for Collections) |
× (through plug-ins, not particularly good) | ✔ | ✔ (through CCK) | × (through plug-ins, not particularly good) |
| Ease of Use (of admin UI) |
✔ | ✔ | × (a bit too large to be easy) | ✔ (though confusing nomenclature) |
| Flexibility (as a CMS) |
× | × (doesn’t have ‘pages’) | ✔ | ✔ |
I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by how professional and comprehensive the online presence (help, screencasts, documentation, demo site) for Omeka is, and conversely a little surprised at how basic Joomla is, given that it is often compared to the more competent Drupal.
Although Drupal ticks many of the boxes, given our aggresive timescales, and my lack of understanding when reading the online documentation, I just don’t think we have the time to learn what is undoubtedly a good system, but has a steep learning curve. For example, just trying to find out basic information about the templating language on the official documentation site seems to be tricky (maybe I’m not looking in the right place, but whatever – it doesn’t seem to match how I look for things).
Given the complexity of Drupal and the over-simplicity of Joomla, that leaves WordPress – great for content, but not for ‘content types’ (objects, exhibitions, etc), and Omeka – great for content types (objects, exhibitions, etc) but not for generic web content.
So we’ve decided to take a hybrid approach – using ‘best of breeds’ applications: both WordPress MU and Omeka. We’ll use WordPress to build the majority of the site, and use Omeka for the ‘collections’ parts. Hopefully we’ll be able to build a WordPress plug-in/widget to integrate the Omeka (collections) content into any page.
If you’d like to create “pages” — there’s an Omeka plugin called SimplePages that will help you create and manage them. Check it out!
Thanks Dave – that is indeed a good point. My reservation about using the plug-in is that the majority of site will probably be non-collections content, so ideally we’d like to have a certain level of sophistication when it comes to creating and managing content, categories and menus.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time with all but Joomla, and overall agree with you. The ‘aggressive timescales’ part is usually the reason to go with Omeka or WP over Drupal, at least if you are unfamiliar with it. Once you get into the Drupal rhythm, you can do some pretty cool stuff with quickly. But hoo-yeah, it takes a while to get into that rhythm.
I’ll second what Dave said about checking out the SimplePages plugin. Depending on what kinds of widgety WordPress features you want or need, it might work well.
One additional criteria I’d like to throw in, though: “hackability”– how easy it is to go into the code, understand how it works, and make tweaks and modifications to it. Here’s how I’d score WP, Omeka and Drupal:
WP: OMG KILL ME NOW!
Omeka: Woo-hoo! This rocks!
Drupal: Sometimes a steep curve, but rocks once you get the rhythm.
So if you’ll be doing PHP stuff beyond the theming, Omeka is a big plus there.
Good luck!
Patrick
WordPress actually has some fairly good support for adding other types of ‘objects’ (ie other than Posts/Pages/Categories/Tags/Links/Media files) – however, they require plugins or writing custom code.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wplistcal/ adds an ‘Event’ object (which then gets its own icon and place in the admin UI).
However, it is still a little clunky not as abstracted as it could be (though will surely improve). May be worth considering over having to integrate two systems (WordPress and Omeka) though.