CoPress

Well, almost. Just two weeks ago, we closed our very first survey to new responses. Since then, we’ve been slowly compiling the results (I’m a student with brutal mid-terms, just like many others on the CoPress team). Over the weekend, I’ll continue working on the final report with the CoPress team. In the meantime, however, I thought I might share interesting findings I’ve come across about both our respondents and how they responded:

• Out of a total of 40 respondents, 10% identified as Publishers, 22.5% as Advisers, 27.5% as Online Editors/Webmasters, and 12.5% as Editor in Chiefs. With all of the other respondents included, it appears as though there is a wide spectrum of interest in the project.
• From that same batch of respondents, 27.5% are running College Publisher 4, 30% are running College Publisher 5, 10% are on WordPress, and 5% are on Drupal and something Django-flavored. College Publisher 4 scored the longest average deploy at 46.5 months.
• College Publisher 4 wins props for an automatic email version, ad management, and free tech support. There are suggestions to include a WYSIWYG editor, more design flexibility, and better multimedia management.
• WordPress received positive comments for its ease of use, plugin architecture, and comment management. It could use improvement in user management, backend customization, and an email edition (it currently requires a plugin).

Surprisingly, we received an entry stating that the paper used Dreamweaver to publish online. That, my friends, is dedication. My sympathy goes out to them. We’ll have a better solution for you soon enough.

Stay turned for stats such as the average number of developers, what languages they generally know, and CMS satisfaction. When the final report from the first survey is announced, so too will be our second, extended, even more amazing survey. We want to map out the technological workflow in your newsroom, as it will help us better understand what we’re working with (and feed you tips based on your current setup). Our second list of questions is comprehensive [Google Doc], but not yet complete. What do you think we’re missing? What do you want to learn about your community’s newsrooms? Please leave your feedback in the comments. Thanks for the support!