A lot of colleges are using College Publisher as a content management system, but is it the best choice?

Well, College Publisher is free, so it can’t be that bad of a choice (that automatically makes it a pretty good choice actually). I’ve heard a lot of complaints about College Publisher as a CMS, but honestly Ellington is the only CMS I have heard journalists praise.

Let’s take a look at a few papers who have either switched to College Publisher or are switching from it:

Lehigh University – My college newspaper switched to College Publisher this past fall from a proprietary CMS (disclosure: I was editor in chief of the paper three years ago). It has been a rocky transition. Apparently, College Publisher does not provide a lot of help or guidance beyond just the initial install.

The new Web site for The Brown and White could use a lot of work. There are numerous CSS issues, it’s not very attractive (a lot of white space) and it lacks some modern features. Ironically, one would think that College Publisher is a good system to go with if you don’t have a lot of technical talent because you are working with a company that specializes in setting up Web sites for college newspapers.

Apparently, however, that is not the case. You need developers who know CSS and other programming to really make College Publisher sing. If you don’t, you end up with a Web site similar to my school’s paper, which is arguable worse than the one it replaces.

If you have a lot of development talent (most college newspapers do not but should try to get some) you can customize College Publisher and make it more robust. However, if you have that much talent, why not just go with a much more powerful and customizable CMS like Drupal?

University of Miami – The Miami Hurricane is switching from College Publisher to a Drupal system this year. The editors at the Hurricane have not been happy with College Publisher, especially because of its technological limitations and the fact that College Publisher has control over the majority of the ads on their site. The ability to control and maximize monetization should be a paramount concern for collegiate newspapers.

Here is a video of editors at the Hurricane discussing why they are making the switch. Is College Publisher a good choice for your collegiate newspaper? I think the answer comes down to what kind of technical talent a paper has.

For the pure learning experience — and that’s what college is for — I’d go with Drupal. This is provided a newspaper has the talent to customize Drupal. Drupal is not easy to customize, but it provides a power framework for future and continual R&D.

Continual R&D is how the Web is supposed to work. The idea of doing a major redesign ever five years is very print centric. Drupal gives papers the ability to roll out continual improvements and new features.

If, however, a paper does not have the talent to use Drupal, College Publisher seems to be the best choice. There are some pretty decent College Publisher sites out there, and setting up a College Publisher site doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge.

If you’re going to go with College Publisher, I’d strongly recommend you hire a consultant to help design and set up your site. It won’t help you with continual R&D, but it will make sure you at least have a pretty good site.

If your college newspaper does not have Web developers, get some ASAP. Any college newspaper without Web developers is very 20th century. Colleges are supposed to be on the cutting edge, not the tail end.

Collegiate editors, how has your experience been with College Publisher? How about Drupal? Are you using another CMS?