Wordpress v Adobe Contribute

[CAMRAMan]

I have been having discussions with the Head of my kids' school to get the website more up to date.

The Head has used a design house in the past & they have done a decent job, if none too exciting. The problem is, the school had the website made & then didn't know what to do with it or how. They have contacted the designers who are proposing a solution based around Adobe Contribute.

Now, I'm no expert in the field, but I've had a look at the Adobe site and I suspect that it will be a) very expensive and b) taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Would a site in Wordpress offer something (almost) as easy to update?

[CrinklyLion]

6 years ago I had (I think) 5 schools with sites built with contribute, hosted with random hosting co.  Most have moved to using their VLE as the school website, apart from one where there's a TA who is handy with a mouse and listened when I showed her how to do stuff.  The one remaining site put together using Contribute is undoubtedly the best of the lot, my quite some margin.  But that's because it is updated without fail every single week, by someone who knows and cares what shade of blue and if there's an easy way to navigate around the site and what the swimming coach will leave and which is the right version of the newsletter and about apostrophes and everything.  And who gives the kids (and, I believe, the teachers) prizes if they give her web content to upload.

I reckon it doesn't matter what the technology is, all that much, tbh.  Whichever they can get their head round, or if it's going to get ignored completely and never updated, whichever is cheapest.

[CAMRAMan]

You'll get an idea of how well it's maintained on the Diary page.

[CrinklyLion]

In my experience it isn't what you use to put it together that makes a difference - it's who does it.  Start with that. 

Work out if it'll be all staff, and they'll be given dedicated directed time for the purpose (staff meeting once a half term in the IT Suite, with the head there doing their bit too, is the minimum for this to really work IMO).  Or a random vaguely techy TA, or someone in the office, who will need an hour or two with pay evry week to do it.  Or a much put upon IT tech who'll end up doing it all at 2am, and getting inventive with content because the teachers don't give her anything to put on there....  Or a willing mug from the PTA.

Then get a clear expectation of what is supposed to be on there.  And make sure that everyone knows what it is. 

Show the person/people who'll be doing the grunt work the options, and ask them which they like.

If one person is responsible for uploading and editing content it is a fecking nightmare when half the school gives them nowt to fill the space.  Work out a system - this week's letter/homework/photos have to be saved in the relevant folder on the server by such and such a time on whatever day.

Then someone senior needs to nag.  People will only treat it as important if that message comes from the top.

Then you cross your fingers and hope.

I actually think that most school websites are a bit of a waste of time!

[perpetual dan]

I've not used Contribute. I suspect it is better if what you're after is a pretty and you have someone with some experience who is willing to put time into it. Wordpress (or Joomla or many other free CMS systems) might also be good enough - and are easy enough to use. A solution that works for one person now needs to work for whoever gets the job next as well. As Crinkly says, getting content is the trick for any web site and is often a thankless task.

Looking at our school site I realise that they send so much by email I cannot remember the username and password. So it functions more as a brochure.
 

[CrinklyLion]

Contribute (I've used v3 and v4) is fine.  I could figure it out, with pretty much no help or training or handover, well enough to botch something together and teach someone else enough to put together summat reasonable-ish.

[Jaded]

I used Contribute sparingly because a client liked it.

I now use Concrete5 and give out permissions as required. The real advantage as far as I am concerned is that it runs anywhere, on anyone's machine, iPad, a PC, the iPhone etc. it's a bit resource heavy, certainly so when compared with a Contribute site, but the users find it easy to use.

So I'd say go for CMS rather than Contribute, more flexible and spend the money on Plugins instead of Contribute software.