[ytadesse]

A few questions:

1) Why are they adamant they they use an "open source cms"?

2) What is the primary use of the website? I don't imagine that "one of the larger financial services companies in the US" would leave the restructuring of the website design to one individual. Is this simply an internal site to serve one function of the business?

3) I'd lean away from the Github idea for now. Financial institutions are typically last in line to try and lead others in that regard.

[technojunkie]

1. Why are they or why am I? I won't be pushing any certain CMS. As long as the right tool is used for the job. Management is against open source for the stated reasons.

2. Website is informational as well as used for typical financial services. Go to any top financial institution, whether banking, insurance, or investment to get an idea. Obviously my coding will have to go through many channels, but I also realize that before I even get started I could help modernize their workflow. It would be kind of radical but I don't see any reason why the workflow couldn't match that of the more interesting tech companies.

3. Right, I totally get that. Maybe there's nothing to be gained in this regard, but I want to be creative in giving back to the community if it's even possible. I see startups like Simple Banking and their use of Github and I don't see any reason why the same couldn't be done in larger companies with the lead and support of the development teams.

[ytadesse]

So, from my understanding, you're actually tasked with re-working their internet site as opposed to their intranet site. This is obviously a bigger undertaking than I had understood. I've worked with banks and insurance companies that have had teams and teams of people working on intranet sites hence my amazement that they'd leave such a task to an individual.

Having said that, especially considering it's a financial institution (i.e. you're standing between people and their $$$), I would highly recommend you select a tried and tested CMS that multiple internal people have extensive knowledge of. The fact that it's "open source" should probably not play a big part in your decision making.

[technojunkie]

I get what you're saying. When I initially met with the department manager, he was excited about the potential of what we could do to make the website more progressive. He sees what other competing companies do and realizes that if this company wants to stay in its position atop, it needs to jump the gun on staying with the times.

I think it would be an important and interesting step to see a financial institute actually encourage and stand by the decision to help out the development community. The best analogy I can offer is when Comcast started using Twitter to directly talk to people. It was inconceivable that a large, faceless corporation would do this and now it's mainstream. In a similar regard, it would be amazing to see more large enterprises wanting to reach out to the development community and give back in a public way.

They will ultimately choose a proprietary, mature CMS platform. I'm crossing my fingers it's not .NET since it's pretty much a nightmare for front end developers. But, hopefully we can find a balance that allows an agile approach to development but also gives us the flexibility to use forward-thinking technologies to improve the workflow.