Content Management System Options

For Units of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts:

If you are working with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and looking to build or rebuild a unit’s website, you should strongly consider Drupal for your content management system (CMS), as it will let you stay aligned with Georgia Tech and Ivan Allen College standards without having to reinvent the wheel – just use the official Georgia Tech Theme and all you have to do is fill in the blanks and create your content pages.  Please contact the college web developer if you are looking to start a new Drupal site, as he can provide you with a customized distribution of Drupal that has the official theme and all common modules already installed and configured.

For more information on Drupal development, there is an active local development community which maintains a Drupal resource website.

For All Other Website Needs:

For websites not directly associated with a unit of the College of Liberal Arts (e.g. faculty and graduate student personal sites, research project sites, etc.), we support and strongly recommend the use of the WordPress-based system known as Sites @ Georgia Tech .  We do not recommend or support Drupal for these needs, as Drupal now requires a strong amount of technical support and maintenance, and the college cannot provide that kind of support for non-unit websites.  If you are thinking about Drupal, be prepared to do this technical support yourself or to hire someone (on an ongoing basis) with strong web development and web application support skills to do this regular Drupal maintenance.  (This maintenance includes, but is not limited to the regular application of software patches to your Drupal based website.)

While we recommend WordPress and particularly the Sites @ Georgia Tech service, there are many other content management systems available today, ranging from free open source options to pricey commercial options.  Free options can give you more flexibility for less up-front cost, but commercial options often come with a support center that you can call / email / chat with when you run into problems.  Keep in mind that commercial options do have a monetary cost, and usually that is a yearly fee and not just a one-time purchase.  The content management systems listed below are for general reference only and are in no way endorsed by Georgia Tech or the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Open Source Options:

Commercial Options: