http://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/current/index.htm
If you haven’t seen it before, Sidebars is an always fun and educational newsletter produced by the staff of the Learning Resources Unit of the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). This month they focus on all things CMS – they are undergoing their own change process currently and have published their well-worth emulating evaluation plan, and various staff also contribute pieces on a few existing open source choices as well as rolling your own CMS.
On this last one, I don’t disagree that you can piece together a variety of inexpensive components that make up part of what we now think of as a standard CMS, but I’m pretty sure you can’t get something that is entirely functionally equivalent, as well as integrated, without a lot of time, effort and money. This is where the CMS movement started from – trying to provide an easier way to access a common set of apps that were being implemented piecemeal. Whether one in fact needs all of that functionality is another question, a good one that doesn’t often get asked enough, and again the folks at Sidebars point to a useful Syllabus article by the Steves from TLTR . Great issue. – SWL