Luther College
Luther College is a small private college (around 2500 students) located in Decorah, IA. Our Reason team consists of:
The Reason Team
Publications
- Brian Jones - Web Technology Coordinator
- Reason templates creation
- Reason themes creation
- Reason module creation
- Various other Reason specific programming
- Continued (though temporary) support of Dreamweaver/Contribute sites
- Kristin Bjerke – Web Content Coordinator
- Coordinates a site move to Reason
- Review of old content
- Proofing
- Guidance
Library and Information Services (LIS)
- Steve Smith – Reason Programmer/Analyst and System Support
- Reason system administration
- Reason module creation
- Reason training
- Various other Reason specific programming
History
In 2005, Luther searched out and implemented a commercial CMS…In September 2008 we began researching a different CMS solution. Not wanting to make a similar mistake, we did a thorough search. All in all, we talked with 12 schools about what they were using and how they came to a decision. The answers ranged from commercial products (e.g. Ingeniux, Luminis), to open-source (dotCMS, Bricolage, Drupal), to homegrown open-source (Reason). We were able to convince the administration our money would better be spent on a new FTE programmer than on licensing fees. So we decided to go the open-source route. In December 2008, we chose Reason for the helpfulness of the folks at Carleton, the cost savings of open-source, the consistency of the code, and the ease of use for the end-user.
Current Status
We launched Reason on June 30, 2009 with our homepage and a brand new admissions site. Since then we have worked to bring more sites into Reason. We currently have 20 sites running Reason. Those who have moved are quite pleased. They move from “something new again?” to “Oh, this is great, this is so easy” very quickly. Uniformly, the users are glad to move off of Contribute/Dreamweaver.
Personally, my job has moved from being a babysitter of a proprietary system to being able to fix my own problems and getting back to working with code. I am very pleased with this.
Favorite Thing
My favorite thing about Reason is the support. When you post a question to the discussion group it is usually lengthily answered within the hour. I believe the longest wait was while Nate was on his honeymoon.