Advice needed! School website - Wordpress or Joomla???

[SimpleSi]

@OP
Which CMS you want to use depends on whoes going to be editing it.

If a dedicated web person, then choose the one you like the look of.

But if its going to be edited by office staff and teachers then ease of use in adding/editing articles is paramount. (which Joolma does once site layout is designed and built - no further work needed by techies )

Si

[beeswax]

I don't know what people are using to view this with but it don't look good in FF on 1024x768

And, to be diplomatic, I don't really rate the front page layout - I mean- how many awards are worth bragging about?

Si
PS to be blunt - its bad

FF on 1920 x 1200. I'll check it out on a lower res in school.
With this being the season to attract prospective pupils to secondary schools, "bragging" about awards is a vital tool in promoting your school.

[MK-2]

FF on 1920 x 1200. I'll check it out on a lower res in school.
With this being the season to attract prospective pupils to secondary schools, "bragging" about awards is a vital tool in promoting your school.

thing is, a lot of parents nowadays know that these awards are just words, meaningless box ticking exercises to get a little badge.
at the end of it, a parent is probably going to look at your gcse/a leve results, and things like that.....i doubt a parent will say "so are you an RM centre of excellence? oh good i was looking for that"

[DSapseid]

Ive done our new website in wordpress. The Academy, Selsey Once you get it going its very easy to use!! Just about to hand parts of it over to other members of staff!

[gibbo_ap]

thing is, a lot of parents nowadays know that these awards are just words, meaningless box ticking exercises to get a little badge.
at the end of it, a parent is probably going to look at your gcse/a leve results, and things like that.....i doubt a parent will say "so are you an RM centre of excellence? oh good i was looking for that"

lol i totally agree about all comments about the badges, head made me put them on. whilst designing the site i showed him a wip and he notified me i was missing badge x.... we had been awarded days before.

not bragging but the school is the highest achieving state school in the county lol..... which of course is all down to me.

[MK-2]

lol i totally agree about all comments about the badges, head made me put them on. whilst designing the site i showed him a wip and he notified me i was missing badge x.... we had been awarded days before.

not bragging but the school is the highest achieving state school in the county lol..... which of course is all down to me.

just out of interest what is the rm centre of excellence badge? what do you need for that to be awarded?

[Mako]

We use Joomla for our intranet here. To be honest, it's a royal PITA.

Current website is a wordpress hybrid. I couldn't get wordpress to do what I wanted to, so I hashed a series of wordpress loops together, to make the website bring the information in. Users login to wordpress and plumb in whatever it is they want to, and its pumped directly where it needs to go. Wordpress in itself is fantastic, however. Out of the box it's not much except a blog, but if you play with it, what you can achieve can be brilliant.

This system works for what I need it to, but I'm looking at overhauling it. On my local WAMP I'm currently looking at CMS Made Simple. Fairly straightforward to use, seems to do everything I need it to. Has a WYSIWYG editor, like Wordpress. I'm soon to call down the powers that be and have them test drive it, to see if they can use it. If they can, then it's fit for purpose.

Just thought I'd throw another solution into the mix there.

[beeswax]

We use Joomla for our intranet here. To be honest, it's a royal PITA.

Current website is a wordpress hybrid. I couldn't get wordpress to do what I wanted to, so I hashed a series of wordpress loops together, to make the website bring the information in. Users login to wordpress and plumb in whatever it is they want to, and its pumped directly where it needs to go. Wordpress in itself is fantastic, however. Out of the box it's not much except a blog, but if you play with it, what you can achieve can be brilliant.

This system works for what I need it to, but I'm looking at overhauling it. On my local WAMP I'm currently looking at CMS Made Simple. Fairly straightforward to use, seems to do everything I need it to. Has a WYSIWYG editor, like Wordpress. I'm soon to call down the powers that be and have them test drive it, to see if they can use it. If they can, then it's fit for purpose.

Just thought I'd throw another solution into the mix there.

I think @webman is using CMS Made Simple for his school website. Here's one I made in CMS Made Simple some while ago (not a school website) - Welcome to JBHS Incorporating A. H. Sutcliffe & Co. - Home

[speckytecky]

Great looking site. Well done you.

Ive done our new website in wordpress. The Academy, Selsey Once you get it going its very easy to use!! Just about to hand parts of it over to other members of staff!

[dave.81]

Our new one was built on Wordpress, although we didn't do the work ourselfs.

Home - Shebbear College

[3s-gtech]

I'm a keen user of Joomla - I love its extensions and the ease with which it can be tweaked, including the CSS etc. Our site uses a heavily customised theme with some plugins such as JEvents, rokslideshow etc. I won't post it up to save my blushes (and I don't like to show anything identifiable here) but it works well for our needs. Does look a bit dated in parts, but updating that is just a case of playing with the theme.

[speckytecky]

Another great looking site - someone put as heap of a load of work into that.

m

Our new one was built on Wordpress, although we didn't do the work ourselfs.

Home - Shebbear College

[webman]

I think @webman is using CMS Made Simple for his school website. Here's one I made in CMS Made Simple some while ago (not a school website) - Welcome to JBHS Incorporating A. H. Sutcliffe & Co. - Home

That's right, I love CMS Made Simple. The new school site is under development and will be online in the next few weeks, but here's one I made earlier as well.

One module I like is ListIt Extended. You can install as many copies as you want of this module, and it gives you an interface to add/edit lists of anything, with customisable fields; as well as being able to customise the output template of those for the front-end.

I'm using it now for vacancies, downloads, staff list, featured items and the virtual tour on the school website.

My feelings about WordPress (Blog masquerading as a CMS) and Joomla (truly awful interface) are well known by most on the forum

[SimpleSi]

Joomla (truly awful interface)

As a prof web person I bow to your opinion but in my schools - no-one is a "webmaster/webmistress"

All my teachers have to create their own articles and upload pictures themselves.

Hoole St Michael CE Primary School

is one of mine - I left the school 2 years ago and the teachers/staff still maintain it without any geek assistance which makes it good for primaries (once setup of course)

(or course it won't win any awards for design but it certainly does the job.

The only time I get involved with my website contents is uploading the odd video and year end roll-over (if wanted)

Si

[Edit] mind you - they seem to have stopped uploading newsletters [/edit]

[SYSMAN_MK]

Intresting thread. Just to add my 2p, after using Joomal, and before that Mambo for the past 7 years I have decided to take a look at Wordpress instead. Currently working on school site here Demo School | Just another WordPress site. Adding content is far less painless than Joomla.