Ominupdate, the future of Shepherd's CMS solution, and capstone

So I just found out this week, that Wordpress is not going to be the future of Shepherd's CMS solution. And I'm okay with that. I always knew that what I was doing was laying a foundation for Shepherd Career Services. What my goal is, though is to discover how I can make my site and my content more adaptable to this new CMS solution called Ominupdate.

Omniupdate, as I have been able to figure out from their demos and website is another kind of CMS specifically used for educational institutions. The program is called OUCampus and like Wordpress, it is a browser-based CMS and features insertable modules for sidebar content and menus ( called widgets in Wordpress). It is unlike the in-depth self-hosted Wordpress, (the wordpress.com blog I'm using for my own site for SCS is also free) free.

From what I can tell with the site, is that educational institutions choose from three different customizable templates, which tells me that this kind of site is especially made for function, not necessarily aesthetics. Each instution's site is pretty much like every other site with a few customizable changes.  Examples of headers and footers show us that there are also custom options, that you don't get available with Wordpress.

OU Campus lists a variety of different benefits of using their programs including many of the same options as Wordpress, including intuitive CMS and easy editing, media addition with forms and polls, it also supports most browsers including IE, Firefox, and Chrome.

Though the OU Campus site is rather vague, so I researched some actual colleges that are using OU Campus as a CMS, University of Denver, University of Chicago, and University of Dallas, so I could get a better understanding of how the CMS functions on a real time level.

Surprisingly, my personal reaction was very positive to each of the sites, they seem well organized and feature some dynamic content, except with much more customizable ability, which actually does make it aesthetically pleasing.

I think this program works well with trying to incorporate any other kind of CMS, because it contains many of the same features, which will translate well.

I only wish that I could have been able to use the actual program, so I could better prepare Career Services for what is to come in the future, however I do plan on putting some of my research in with my technical plan so they can be more informed.