Here’s a quick update for those of you currently using our Adobe Contribute content management system (CMS) to manage CAES and Extension websites.

Contribute Discontinued

When we purchased Adobe Contribute 10 or 12 years ago, it was a relatively new product. But as you are probably aware software has a short lifespan. Adobe discontinued the product in early 2017 and will soon cease sales. The CAES Office of Information Technology has already transitioned many sites, including our county websites, into other CMS platforms and will start moving our remaining Contribute sites on a case-by-case basis over the next few months.

Some of the affected websites:

  • Entomology Honey Bee Program
  • FoodPIC
  • Various commodity websites
  • Project FOCUS
  • The CAES Intranet
  • Integrated Pest Management
  • Landscape Pest Management
  • Georgia Master Gardener
  • The Institute of Plant Breeding
  • Sustainable Agriculture
  • Urban Pest Management

The bad news is that moving a site means there will be things to learn and some changes. But the good news? The good news is that we have some really good options for hosting sites. In the long run these will be more stable and more user-friendly for both you and the site’s viewers.

WordPress

One Contribute alternative is to move your site to WordPress. We recommend this option for programs, teams and labs. Many of the sites listed above would fit well within a WordPress template. We like to think of these sites as children, cousins, and friends of the main CAES and Extension sites. They’re related, but they have their own “personality.”

You might think of WordPress as mostly for blogs, but that’s not exactly the case. More traditional sites can be hosted there, too. WordPress is easy to use, allows for newsletter subscriptions through MailChimp, and has some nice built-in features like tagging and site search. Check out our listing of CAES and Extension WordPress sites to get a sense of what your site might be like in a WordPress site.

Want to know more about WordPress? Visit the OIT website’s WordPress page.

Adobe Experience Manager

A second option for core CAES and Extension content is our Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform, which is used to host both the main CAES and Extension websites. Besides these core sites, a number of CAES commodity and program sites are currently hosted in AEM as well. In the coming months, we will be making available an Extension template as well. AEM allows sharing of common resources like publications, events, and personnel between its sites and is most suitable for sites that are closely related to the core CAES and Extension websites.

Want to know more about AEM? Visit the OIT website’s AEM page.

Where to go from here?

As of this writing, there’s nothing that needs to happen today if your site is still in Contribute. As mentioned, we will begin contacting site owners to discuss migration plans in the next few months. But if you want to be ahead of the game, let us know! The CAES Web Team would be happy to talk to you about options and timelines. Just email caesweb@uga.edu and we’ll be in touch.

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