Last year, UC Davis conducted a survey of higher ed institutions across the nation. We collected comprehensive data about the adoption and use of Web content management systems, and published this information for the public. Our goal was to learn about the experiences - both positive and negative - of other universities in the adoption of Web CMS, and to share this information with those who may currently be considering the same.

Recently, the URL for the survey results has changed to http://cms.ucdavis.edu/cmssurvey. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

At this year’s UC Computing Services Conference (UCCSC), UC Davis and UC Irvine will discuss how each campus selected a Web content management system and how the two campuses discovered the power of collaboration.

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A recent survey of 50 not-for-profit and for-profit college and university websites conducted by Niel Raisman of University Business shows that most of the sites failed to accomplish two basic, yet critical tasks: provide customer service for the needs of users and market the school. According to the survey, most suffered from poor design and navigation, and were filled with proprietary jargon difficult for audiences to interpret.

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Today, the Requirements and Evaluation committee of the UC Davis Web CMS initiative posted results from an online survey of campuses completed last month.

The survey was conducted to collect comprehensive data about the adoption and use of Web content management systems among institutions of higher education, and to make this information available to communicators, webmasters, technologists and other key campus personnel. Our goal was to learn about the experiences - both positive and negative - of other universities in the adoption of Web CMS, and to share this information with those who may currently be considering the same.

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With so many increasingly affordable Web CMS applications to choose from, it is all too tempting to make a decision based solely on price. But price often blinds buyers to other, sometimes more important considerations, according to a recent article in Campus Technology. So how is an organization to choose?

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According to a recent story in Campus Technology, new Web CMS features and functions are driving rapid changes in the practice of Web content management at higher ed institutions. The ability to impose consistency on unstructured content and to edit and manage that content without expert technical help is precisely what has drawn universities to the newer, flexible CMS solutions.

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CMS Watch today released its annual list of kudos and shortcomings, identifying which CMS vendors are excelling - and lagging - in various categories pertaining to the Web CMS field. The list is drawn from and limited to the 40 major solutions reviewed by CMS Watch in the Global and European editions of The Web CMS Report.

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Early in December, an invitation to participate in a broad survey designed to gather information about Web content management needs and preferences was distributed to technical and non-technical stakeholders across the campus, including faculty and staff members of the TSP group, the Campus Communicators Council, and the Webmasters forum.

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Open source software is gaining attention within the content management industry. According to Seth Gottlieb of Optaros, many open source Web CMS solutions are feature-rich, fully baked applications that compete favorably in the market space and suffer only because they lack the sales and marketing that drive the success of most commercial offerings - for now. While commercial Web CMS providers staff only a relative few who actually develop and test their products, open source projects are driven almost entirely by programmers who can build and release new features, enhancements, and bug-fixes to the public much more quickly than any commercial (resource limited and bottom-line driven) enterprise.

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Presented by Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch
3rd Annual Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies
Tuesday, November 28 2006 - 9:00am

In the global landscape, there are over 2,000 commercial and open source products that call themselves Web content management systems. While it has been fashionable in the industry to claim that consolidation is occurring, it is unlikely that any such change will take place quickly or soon. Any review of CMS requires that certain key and universal functional capabilities be considered and compared across a range of products that vary in size, cost and complexity, including:

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