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

[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]

Edited September 29, 2011 by SimpleSi

[SimpleSi]

Currently working on school site here Demo School | Just another WordPress site.

Visually beautiful as usual

 

And will we be able to stand on your shoulders again with an Edugeek Wordpress Package?

 

Si

[browolf]

Hi I'm a newbie here, just want a bit of advice from all you experts as to which CMS we should use for our school website.

 

It's for a fairly small infant school who really just want the normal information on the site that you'd find on any primary school website and be able to update menu/nav bar and add links to newsletters, very basic stuff. Don't need a blog.

 

One of the fathers of a child at the school wants to redo the site and is pushing to use Wordpress. I've not used either but do know html, did a bit of research and have read that WP is mainly used for blog and Joomla is a better CMS. Just wondered what the experts thought would suit the purposes of the school?

 

I understand WP is more user friendly and that would be an advantage as the staff would need to update themselves but Joomla is more suited for CMS and the school would want to upload image galleries of school trips etc.

 

Thanks !

 

The difference depends on what type of content you intend to put on there and how often. Wordpress is traditionally used for blogging as you've discovered. If you take away the blog use what you have is delivering items of content in a historical fashion. School sites are typically a mix of static content and "news" items. Wordpress is better suited to news and joomla better suited to static content. So the answer is which is the focus.

 

a 3rd option would be to integrate a gallery plugin such as NextGEN Gallery » GalleryView » NextGEN Gallery with wordpress.

[speckytecky]

Fabulous!

 

If you are making it available as a package I'd love one.

 

 

Struggled but succeeded (with a lot of support - specially from Steve Hill) in the end with Joomla 1.5. Now redundant from that school but started another 1.5 at my other school and it's not sparkling. Playing with the latest Joomla as a test site but - it isn't coming naturally! So maybe it's time for me to think about switching to Wordpress.

 

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.

[awhittle]

coming from a web developer point of view, i would highly recommend Wordpress for schools, once a site it put together, it can daily be admin'ed by the school and pupils (if desired) you can also lock the user access to editors and admins, etc, so they can add content without messing up the design, i am happy to work with any school to show them an example of how it can work for them.

 

It really is easy, and once put together right people don't even have to know it is wordpress, it can look like a normal site.

 

I hope this helps

 

AW

[nickbro]

As another web developer, another +1 for wordpress. Our school uses it for the main school website Crickhowell High School | Excellence Through Endeavour. It does require a bit of knowledge to get the theme as you would like it.

[awhittle]

i know a builder called Tucktail.com . This service is provided in the name of "Website Tonight" .

Is this some kind of plug ?

 

if you create a website in free website providers like WP, the domain name will be theirs, eg. heloise.wordpress.com..so this will shows everyone that your website is a free website..

 

If you know anything about wordpress, it that you can self host this on any domain you want, so you have the site the URL and the data all hosted in your own space, so nobody knows its free and wordpress, but to be honest if your delivering a good quality website that is easy to use and complies to all the standards, what is the problem,

There is no point re inventing the wheel, this has been put together for this exact use, for people to self manage there website who don't have a programming background.

 

Thanks