Library Web Chic

The last six months here at MPOW have been bumpy to say the least. However, today, looking at the pre-alpha version of the CMS we are in the process of building I’m starting to believe that it will all come together. The system we are building in extremely flexible. It is based on the concept that each page is made up of context types and that any page can have an unlimited number of content types that are a part of the page. Plus, the content types can appear in any order on the page. Having these different content types allows us to do a number of things. First, we can compartmentalize the code for building purposes and build modules for managing different content type one at a type. Second, because each content type has its own code for how it renders on a page and administration code, our site can be easily expanded to accomodate new content types. Third, any functionality that appears on one page could appear on another page. Last, from a management standpoint, we will have one set of code for all the pages rather than specialized code for each page depending on what that page does. Its an ambition and difficult project, but growing up my dad told me that nothing easy is ever really worth doing. So I don’t expect this will be a walk in the park. Still it is nice to have things come together.

I’m particularly happy with the latest developments in the system in terms of cutting over from the old system to the new. Initially, we thought that the transfer of content into the system was going to be onerous because it would mean that no changes could be made to the Libraries’ site while the transfer was happening. However, my talented staff figured out how to have the site render with some content being in the new CMS and some still being in the old static pages. This makes my life a lot easier, both from a workload management and political standpoint.

Going forward we have many more obstacles to overcome. Particularly with developing some of the other modules for the different content types. We need to develop a image gallery module, news module, XML module, and many other modules to accomodate the content-types that already exists on the site. However, overall we’ve taken significant steps forward. Hopefully we can keep the ball rolling and the momentum growing on the project. Only time will tell.