This isn’t a full review of MySource Matrix, in the mode of a car review, opinions can change over time so this is an early review having worked on MySource Matrix for about 3 months.Coast have been granted the unenviable task of migrating the old Westminster University website (consisting of approx 13 mini sites) into a brand new structure consisting of 1 site.Early advantages of this asset based system were apparent because the migration was largely rushed and unprepared for. The ability to move and rename assets and add multiple URLs in the process allowed us to alter the structure of the site due to changes in the approach.The system is quite robust as well with the inclusion of workflows for content editors ensuring control throughout the site.
The migration faltered when we were inputting data from the old website that was hosted in immediacy, but that was largely due to the erroneous code from the old site. Matrix tried it’s best to strip out as much of this code as possible, but countless hours were used manually stripping out useless span tags, old HTML and styles that would prove to be quite harmful to a page. On one occasion, an empowered content editor was responsible for the ultimate faux pas of pasting in from Microsoft Word!
The resulting page was broken and although the layout remained, the page was covered in Times New Roman (gasp!).Having conquered data entry and experienced the laborious nature of uploading images and PDFs as assets before linking to them in the body copy, I would suggest that a mass uploader is needed. Mysource Matrix employs java throughout to control The asset tree, therefore a java based uploader tool could be employed to upload batches of images. But, we are only using an earlier version of MySource Matrix so this minor complaint may already be rectified.
Once you are familiar with the asset system employed by MySource Matrix, a lot of the more extensive elements become straightforward.With a large brunt of the site completed (approx 4000 pages and counting), We begin to concentrate on the dynamic side of the CMS including forms,news & events and asset lists.But for now, Coast can approve MySource Matrix as a robust CMS capable of managing high volumes of data.Now let’s really put it to the test!
