CMS Can Suck my Ass

I maintain the website for the office I work for at WTFU. I've done so for three years now-- it's a pretty boring job, but I don't mind so much because I've been doing HTML stuff since high school, and I genuinely enjoy working with technology of any sort. Plus, I work with some pretty cool people, at least one of which is a reader and an all-around cool person. You know who you are.

My little mundane world was rocked when I heard we were getting a content management system (CMS). From Wikipedia:

A Web content management system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

What does this mean, exactly? The system that WTFU has purchased will take care of all the formatting and page layout issues for us-- we only provide the raw content, ie-- pictures, text, links, etc. In theory, this is a very good thing-- WTFU is notorious for not having a uniform look across the site. Each department's pages look completely different from each other departments. It looks sloppy and unprofessional overall.

My office has always done a good job of maintaining a site that has a professional look and a functional layout. It was that way before I started, and it has only gotten better since my employment began (as well it should). It helps a lot that Atropos (another boss) has a better than average understanding of technology in general. She has a firm grasp of what can and cannot be done, and understands that functionality is priority one, with presentation taking a back seat to that. Working with her has been a positive experience for me, and I like to think that it has been for her as well. During my employment under Atropos, I've taught her some slightly advanced HTML techniques (don't laugh), and even a smattering of Javascript-- many times, she will edit some of the code I've written to make what amounts to a very minor update for me, but a fairly complex one for someone who doesn't understand how the web works. It's a great relationship, and I consider her a student of technology and a colleague in many ways.

Back to the CMS-- as I've stated, this is a good idea... mostly. Had it been implemented properly, I wouldn't be here whining... but I am, and so guess how it's going. Go ahead, guess.

Yeah, that badly.

I have a very, VERY long laundry list of complaints about this hunk of shit, but I'll stick to the big one for now:

ALL OF THE GODDAMN WORK I'VE DONE FOR THE LAST THREE FUCKING YEARS IS GOING TO BE FLUSHED DOWN THE FUCKING SHITTER BECAUSE OF THIS HORRENDOUS PIECE OF AMPHIBIOUS SHIT!!!!!

I feel better.

To clarify, I've been working for the last few years to streamline many of the office's processes and help to make our technology work for us. For instance, we needed a convenient way to allow users to navigate multiple areas of the site. The problem was compounded by the fact that our office caters to multiple audiences. The solution was to implement a multi-tiered pop-out menu to make navigating easier, and it's worked out rather well.

I can't use it with the new CMS.

I also have no way to port over our numerous databases at the time of this writing. We host a large number of events on campus, and we require people to pre-register for these events. All registration is done online, and invoices/confirmations are automagically generated using ASP. It's a good system that allows me to search, sort, report on and generate nametags for our registrants, and I can't fucking have it because God forbid that WTFU actually do any research into how the different departments have structured their processes. This is a critical early phase of the software development life cycle, and the university just tossed that right out the window.

What does that ultimately mean?

It means that I have to go out of my way to make a system that doesn't work for us... work for us. Because some shithead administrator made a bad decision.

I like to think that this is my intro to the real world. I tell myself that to make me feel better.

It doesn't work.

I think I hate my job.