Taking into account our identified requirements, support availability, and training options, PaperThin’s CommonSpot 6.0 has been selected as UW-Green Bay’s Web CMS solution.

Five other UW System campuses are already on board with CommonSpot:

  • UW-Eau Claire
  • UW-Milwaukee
  • UW-River Falls
  • UW-Stout
  • UW-Superior

In talks with these campuses, we found them to be very generous in sharing information. In addition, CommonSpot was an existing UW System vendor with a contract already in place.

Benefits of using an existing contract:

  • Cost sharing – initial license and annual maintenance is divided
  • Knowledge sharing – lessons learned, custom elements, system setup, best practices, documentation, training materials, etc.…
  • Rejecting an existing contract requires evidence of why it will not work for us
  • Using a non-contracted vendor requires completing a full RFP

Although open-source solutions were considered, we found that often the low up-front cost only leads to higher costs down the road with third-party support, consulting, and maintenance.

CommonSpot runs on Adobe’s ColdFusion, but can support a number of scripting languages (limited only by the server setup) including ASP.NET, .ASP, .PHP, .CFM, and Java. There is also a CommonSpot Application Development Framework (ADF) which makes it easy to develop new applications, customize existing applications, and move them into production using the system’s out-of-the-box APIs and UI components. Once completed, CommonSpot users can share new applications with others in the CommonSpot community in an open source-like fashion.

Information Services will be hosting and supporting CommonSpot in-house. With this internal expertise, we will be fully capable of supporting our campus on this system.