Departika, a graphic and web design studio

The Industry

The Great CMS Debate

Over the last several months, the topic of CMSs (Content Management Systems) has been widely discussed within the office. After several years of doing custom development on all of our projects it was important to find a CMS solution that could streamline projects and lighten the dependency on custom developers. Over the last year we have stuck with one CMS that has helped offer our clients an affordable solution as well as lowering cost on our end. Now we are reevaluating our options in the hope of finding additional solutions that can meet project needs in unique ways as well as continuing to do custom development. So here we are.

I should first mention that my initials happen to be CMS, so it seems all too fitting that I should write this post. There are plenty of avenues to go down in regards to the benefits, pitfalls, cost effectiveness, etc. of using a CMS. However, the goal of this post is to get varying overall opinions on what’s important, what isn’t important, and past experiences in regards to a CMS. This will aid in our internal goals but hopefully shed light to others with similar issues as well. Based on input and further research I will follow up with more detailed posts on specific aspects. You might call this a series of sorts.

Below is a recap of some generalized input we’ve compiled internally relating to multiple types of disciplines/interaction with using a CMS.


Developers

This is the group of people that you will find most of the input from on forums, blogs, and other web outlets. Opinions from this group generally focus on the functionality of a CMS. What can it do? How can it speed up development? How hard is it to develop within? These questions/views though important only make up a small portion of the discussion. Sometimes this gets overlooked by them.

Things That Are Important

• It is easy to extend. There is the option to develop out custom sections and implement them seamlessly into the admin section.
• There are no restrictions on development. It should produce clean, semantic markup. It shouldn’t require javascript to perform functions that can be done with markup.
• Development time is actually streamlined. The development language and and features should make it faster and easier to develop sites, rather than be cumbersome to workflow.

Things That Are Not Important

• Themes. Having the ability to change themes or look and feel of a site at any point is useless. Rather than be bogged down by themes, the chosen design should be able to be integrated with ease.
• How the admin screens look and function. Design and UI come second behind performing the tasks needed and meeting the development demands.

Designers/UI Gurus

This group of people are a valuable extension to developers. They are a bridge between understanding development needs while still focusing on how the end-user will function with the CMS. Often this area is where the major pitfalls in most CMSs exist.

Things That Are Important

• The CMS must have all the functionality needed but not muddy up the process for the end-user. Most likely if the CMS can “Do it all” then it is going to be confusing when performing simple tasks.
• Custom fields. Content fields should be associated with specific content. Having all content input based around a blog platform creates confusion when creating entries for other types of content like portfolios, news articles, etc.
• The aesthetics should be at a good enough quality to make the user experience successful. Usability of the admin screens comes first and the design should family with the functionality and be pleasing to the user.

Things That Are Not Important

• Everything is important. Any issues whether it be from the end-user or development side deserve consideration and a resolution.

End-User/Client

From a business stand point this may be the most important group of people. They are most likely paying for the project, use it the most after launch, and will be the recipient of any flaws or successes with the CMS.

Things That Are Important

• All people in company/department can do content population and light tweaks without major technical knowledge.
• The CMS is easy to use. Training should be painless and simple enough to pass on to other users.
• User restrictions. It is nice to have editable content restricted to specific users.
• Cost. The licensing and monthly fees should be sizable to the scale of the site if any exist at all.

Things That Are Not Important

• What’s going on in the backend. Development is important for SEO but beyond that it doesn’t matter what the means is to the end.
• The CMS does all kinds of other stuff. As long as it does what it needs to do for this project, it works.

Again, this topic is very broad and the hope for this initial post is to get as much real world feedback as possible. Please use the format above to response pertaining to your specific group. Also, tell us about specific CMS platforms you have used. Don’t be shy, express your deepest darkest hate for your particular CMS or tell us what you like about it.