It seems everyone wants a content management system nowadays. Every time someone contacts us for a new website design, one of the basic requirements is a content management system. Most people don’t know exactly what they want in a content management system, but they know that they want to be able to update their website without having to contact their web developers.
So with so many options and a seemingly unlimited supply of content management systems available out there, should you bother paying for one?
Well for me the answer is absolutely not – if you can get a free open source CMS to do everything you require, why pay for a bespoke or licensed option?
I spent years with a company who thought the way of the future was building a CMS to sell on. At the time it was a great idea, but that was before there were any decent free or open source ones available.
Right now you would be hard pressed to find a commercial CMS that has the capabilities of a free open source option. Most of the popular open source solutions are maintained by a network of enthusiasts that update the software for fun. Not only do they update the software, they also build many different modules that allow developers to easily plug in new features for your website. Whether it’s a mailing list or video management tool, in general a click of a button is all it takes to give your website this functionality.
The biggest problem nowadays is choosing the right CMS for your business.
For a large website, I wouldn’t look much further than Typo3, Drupal, Mambo or Joomla as the CMS of choice for your business. Both have huge communities of contributors making it easy to find a module to suit your requirements.
At the lower end of the scale, for say a small brochure type website you’ve got WordPress, CushyCMS and many more to choose from.
In this day and age, paying a license fee for a CMS is a total waste of money. In saying that though, there are many cases where an off-the-shelf CMS just won’t suit the plans you have for your website. In this case, your only option is to have one built specifically for your requirements. If you have requirements for a CMS, why not talk to me first and I can point you in the right direction!
#1 by John Franks at October 29th, 2008
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As CIO, I’m always looking for ways to help my team, business teams, and ad hoc measures of various vendors, contractors and internal team members. A book that is required reading is I.T. Wars: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium. It has a great chapter on content management and its implementation. That chapter is great if you’re struggling with your organization’s definition of CM – particularly if Business is having a difficult grasp of it – and the chapter helps any organization to the proper understanding and sizing of it for best return on investment.
We keep a few copies kicking around – it would be a bit much to expect outside agencies to purchase it on our say-so. But, particularly when entertaining bids for projects and in the face of challenge and change, we ask potential solutions partners to review relevant parts of the book, and it ensures that these agencies understand our values and practices.
The author, David Scott, has an interview here that is a great exposure: http://businessforum.com/DScott_02.html
The book came to us as a tip from one of our interns who attended a course at University of Wisconsin, where the book is in use; I like to pass along things that work, in the hope that good ideas continue to make their way to me.
#2 by Primal Sneeze at October 29th, 2008
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The Loudmouthman wrote an excellent piece about this recently, though in a more scathing manner.
I wouldn’t categorise WordPress as lower end though – with PHP know-how, an large selection of plugins, magic and a spoon, WordPress can made achieve great things. I would pitch it as mid- or mid-to-high end. Whereas ChushyCMS is definitely lower end, if indeed it can be called a CMS at all.