Oxfam international opt for Plone CMS

Oxfam International, an international confederation of non-governmental organisations (NGO) that are working to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering and injustice, opt for the free and powerful Plone CMS. Zea was awarded the contract to develop Oxfam new CMS. The project, in which 6 Zea members were involved, resulted in large contributions to Plone including Linguaplone, Versioning, Kupu and Multisite.

Article based on a case study by BlueFountain

Oxfam International has recently implemented a new and dynamic web site to provide information on the organisation, details of on-going projects together with ways in which people can get involved from a what can you do section to a secure area for donations. The web site is also used as a powerful campaign tool with the public being encouraged to sign up to the ongoing Oxfam “I'm in” campaign.

Oxfam sees the Internet as a very powerful tool in the fight against poverty and its causes and as such it was felt to be essential to have a web site that allowed the organisation to communicate with the public and with other Oxfam branches.

As Hugh Wallace, Head of Interactive Media for Oxfam GB, explains: “As Oxfam works in over 70 countries around the world, we were looking for a system that would enable us to share information across the organisation and beyond.”

The key business issues was the type of software application used as the backbone of the site.  Working in over 70 countries Oxfam felt that they needed a system which would allow people from throughout the organisation to collaborate and create engaging content without getting caught up in technical details. Cost and availability were also an issue with Plone CMS solution was seen as the best option.

Joel Bassuk, Website Manager for Oxfam International, who led on the project implementation for OI said "We undertook detailed research on a variety of CMS packages currently available and from this found that the open source application Plone best met our requirements."

Hugh Wallace, Head of Interactive Media for Oxfam GB, whose team helped with the technical roll-out of the project, added, "Plone was the right choice and we’re very pleased to have the opportunity to work with the open source community.  It was also important that we work with a company which has extensive knowledge and experience of Plone implementation."

More information

• Seattle Plone Conference 2006, Andrew Hatton, Confessions of a NGO (video and support)
• Seattle Plone Conference 2006, Duncan Booth, Managing Multiple Plone Site at Oxfam (support)
• Seattle Plone Conference 2006, Geir Bækholt, Making and Managing Multilingual Sites with LinguaPlone (Support)