Author: Elizabeth Budd
Hello! I’m Elizabeth, a sophomore at Carleton College intending to major in history. I was exposed to digital humanities in a class last winter, and I’ve since become fascinated by the possibilities offered by digital humanities! My other interests include traveling, maps, musicals, and Sudoku.
Prior to this week of training, I had not thought extensively on the necessity of matching a project’s needs to the suitability to a platform, especially content management systems (CMS). During the past week, we have explored three distinct CMS – Omeka, WordPress, and Reason (Carleton’s own website builder).
While all have the same basic goal, each best suit different projects. Reason, which is used for Carleton’s website, is quite easy to edit and requires absolutely no coding experience. However, it does not allow the degree of customization available in Omeka or WordPress. On the other hand, Omeka and WordPress are not as intuitive, and thus harder to learn, and coding experience is helpful for both Omeka and WordPress. Thus, each CMS is better suited to some projects than others; no one platform is always best for all projects. The correct CMS for the job depends on a project’s goal, scope, content, and workers.
