Higher Education Should Skip Proprietary Website Platforms

In almost 20 years of working with the web in Higher Ed, I’ve seen many marketing websites built in all kinds of systems or even home-grown systems. The one thing I’ve found in common with schools that use proprietary website platforms instead of the very common open-source ones is that no one knows how to use them! Especially at smaller schools and colleges.

Usually, no internal staff members have the technical know-how to affect change in the systems, and most schools don’t have the luxury of hiring technology staff based on one specific platform with proprietary programming needed to do even the simplest of things. Additionally, these schools are mostly beholden to either the platform’s creator, an agency or both for any changes that need to be made.

Those factors = Time and Money.

If, instead, you work with either WordPress or Drupal, together responsible for almost 50% of the websites on the internet, you will have a large choice of developers to work with, already-built plugins to extend website features, and native integration into almost every other platform you would use.

Bonus: Most junior staff coming to work in your school will likely have some exposure to WordPress or Drupal, decreasing their ramp-up time.

Yes, there is money and work involved in getting a site set up in WordPress or Drupal, and yes, there is money and work involved with maintaining it and keeping it secure. There is always money and work involved. But I rarely see ‘show-stopper’ roadblocks with WordPress or Drupal the way I have with proprietary systems due to a lack of internal knowledge.

If you are contemplating redoing your website, unless there are strong business-related reasons to think otherwise, I would strongly encourage a school to choose WordPress or Drupal.

Likewise, if you are a higher-ed marketer wondering why seemingly simple things are taking forever to get, are you using a proprietary system? Those slowdowns and the money involved equate to lost opportunities to have your website be a meaningful player in your digital marketing playbook.