Down to three.

[Ben McCombs]

Hello everyone,

We are looking into three content management systems. The three are OmniUpdate, Terminal Four, and Drupal. I would appreciate any input from users that have had experiences with these three. We are a small division three school with roughly 1700 students. Thanks so much for any feedback!

Ben

[Justin Gatewood]

Hello Ben,

 

I am the Webmaster for Victor Valley College in Southern California. I've used Drupal and OmniUpdate (plus many others), but I've not used or seen Terminal Four. We've been OmniUpdate customers since late 2006 and I would never again consider another Web CMS than OU Campus.

 

I've been working professionally on the web since working for a local dial-up Internet Service Provider in 1996, and - in all that time - I have yet to see a Web CMS that provides a more flexible and user-friendly platform than OmniUpdate's OU Campus.

 

Without OU Campus, I would not have been able to efficiently manage our institution's web presence as a one-man shop for the past 6+ years.  Additionally, training for end-users takes about 30 minutes, and they continue to use it because it's easy (I made some video tutorials with Camtasia that users can access, and that's typically what users prefer in the way of initial training).

 

Feel free to contact me offline at [phone], ext. 2697 or [e-mail] with any questions you might have.

 

Justin Gatewood
Webmaster
Victor Valley College

[Michael Fienen]

OU and T4 are both good platforms. Between the two, I'd say OU is the better deal though, given their focus on higher ed and the sheer quality of work they do for their clients. I'm not at all saying the T4 crew is bad either. They're just broader in scope with their product - but still strong supporters of higher ed. Ultimately, I think you'll be happy with either choice.

I'm, personally, not a fan of Drupal for most higher ed shops. Powerful, capable platform, but you also have to have people resources to commit to it if you're really gonna make it fit. Most schools are not at all prepared for what that really means. Some have done it and done it well, but consistently that success relies on understanding how a system like Drupal changes your resource needs to support it properly.

<opinion class="biased">

I'm still a fan of dotCMS if you need to strike a good balance on enterprise grade software with open source mentality (and cost). You're probably beyond the recommendation phase it sounds like though, but I still feel like I should mention it.

</opinion>

[Kathie Kentfield]

I echo Justin's comments about OUCampus.  I can't say enough about their customer service - I never feel like I'm bothering them or have a "stupid" question to ask and their response time is great.  Easy to train our end-users, also. 

[Ben McCombs]

Thank you all, I appreciate it!

Ben