We recommend that educators consider many factors when choosing a CMS. While some of these factors are purely technical, such as what type of server is required to run the CMS, others are more profound. By definition, most any CMS will enable basic activities like managing users and organizing and controlling their access to content. A demand for certain features like wikis might help narrow the decision, but popular features like blogs, announcements, and calendars are almost ubiquitous. In short, the difference between one CMS and another might appear slight.
However, some factors are worth careful scrutiny.
- The decision to support either a proprietary or open source-licensed program will have numerous long-term consequences, such as how training and support will be obtained and the extent to which the program can be legally modified "in house." Costs of licensing for upgrades and potential vendor lock with proprietary systems will have to be weighed against the additional maintenance and administration that can accompany open source software.
- Another important factor is what software the users are already comfortable with. If a department has already expended substantial funds to train the staff or students in Microsoft products, a strong case can be made for choosing Microsoft Sharepoint over other CMSs. However, a department not strongly committed to Microsoft should look at other options, since Sharepoint loses much of its appeal when not paired with Microsoft Office.
- Open source programs are only as good as the community of developers supporting them. Decision-makers should look carefully at the development team and consider whether it has a long-term commitment to regularly updating, patching, and adding new features to the program (see Evaluating Open Source Content Management Platforms).
Some practices that might make the situation much easier is to ensure that a good sample of eventual end-users successfully pilot the system before it is fully adopted. If the response is lukewarm, perhaps the search for a better CMS should continue. After all, the most important factor is how much users will enjoy and benefit from the CMS. A CMS that is difficult or cumbersome to use isn't worthy of the name. With so many options at one's disposal, there's really no excuse to settle for less.