This is in reference to the CRAPTASTIC CMS that I have to use for my one-day-a-week job of uploading content to a research website. I have whined about it to friends, now watch me flail with frustration at the internet. (The word ‘flail’? So evocative, especially when I type it most weeks in the context of ’she sustained a flail chest injury’. But I digress.) Where was I? Oh yes. Counting the ways.

I hate the CMS because:

1.) The organisation that I work for has more than enough money to invest in a CMS that actually works.

2.) It is made by people who make research organisations think they’re providing a useful service, but if the research organisations had any experience or interest in a decent CMS, they would be dumping this thing like a handful of biting ants.

3.) …despite that, the CMS was created with research organisations in mind? End users (i.e. me - the person they have to get in, because almost everyone else can barely use it, and have better things to do with their time than learn all it’s nasty little glitches and long drawn out methods) can only upload ONE. SINGLE. FILE. AT. A. TIME. Even though there are regular conferences that spew forth myriad publications, papers, audio recordings and posters.

4.) There is no way of getting a quick overview of all files, or even groups of the same type of file.

5.) …and there is no FTP access, without making an in-depth arrangement via emails that are rarely replied to and rely upon offerings of 30cm oysters and Swedish virgins. i.e. it doesn’t happen.

6.) There is tagging capability, [cue: shock and awe] but you can only tag ONE. FILE. AT. A. TIME. This is despite the fact that there are regularly groups of documents that all have the same tags. Thus, barely anything is tagged.

7.) It took three months for the search function to be fixed, although this was the only way of discovering what file were already on the server.

8.) The external design, and the internal interface are bogglingly ugly. Editing them? Not allowed. Sorry.

9.) The only way to overcome its pseudo MSWord data entry panel is to switch into the html view, where you can’t save what you’re doing unless you switch back, and if you hit Ctrl-A (as I seem to have done so many, many times) Firefox keels over and dies with impunity.

10.) And finally, because it’s so patently obvious that it is not suitable for information management for any organisation outputting more than a few documents a week, and yet the people that employ me aren’t really very web savvy, and thus have no idea that this is the case.

ARGH!! And I wrote all this in four or five minute bursts, in between uploading audio files via the crappy web interface. You’d think that because this makes my job longer and I’m paid by the hour, that I would be happy. But it has gone waaaaaay beyond the cash.