The first full day of our new Web publishing system is coming to a successful close. Yakimaherald.com is now running on a home-grown content management system (CMS) called “Depot Central V2.”

Some pieces of the old Web site remain, such as paid obituaries and newspapers in education. These legacy areas will be phased out and the old server will be cleaned and used to bolster yh-r.com’s stability.

Building a news CMS is a relatively unusual task in the industry. Most news Web sites pay companies to customize and host existing publishing platforms for their news sites. A quick look at Yakima and Northwest area news providers; kimatv.com, kapptv.com, kndo.com, king5.com, nwcn.com, komotv.com, kirotv.com and many more are all built by their corporate owners or by private developers. Yakimaherald.com will join a handful of news Web sites built from within the home organization, such as spokesmanreview.com and seattletimes.com.

Taking on CMS projects by news organizations can be a risk, because they can be costly and time consuming to get off the ground. But the benefit of having a home grown system allows organizations to constantly improve their Web site to reflect the needs of their community.

I have experienced the troubles associated with ‘bought’ Web systems. They occur most often when trying to customize the site to help present a given story, that day. Dealing with customer service at corporate headquarters, or tracking down a programmer at the company that built your news Web site is downright impractical when deadlines fall in your lap.

Our old system, even though it was relatively flexible, was not an easy tool to use emerging online publishing techniques. Now, with Depot Central, it improves yakimaherald.com’s ability to take advantage of new online publishing methods for the benefit of our readers and viewers.

The first day went well and the Web team continues to find, and fix bugs. If you have any problems or comments please let us know. You can e-mail us at webmaster@yakimaherald.com, thanks again!

-TJ