What A CMS Should Be.
Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by Simon Chen
I’m constantly amazed at how many digital agencies here in Australia and abroad all push the virtues of their own, proprietary Content Management Systems.
I can’t see the point.
From a client retention perspective - I can. That makes sense. Sort of.
But for the client, buying into a stand alone CMS is just not logical.
I’m a big believer in “open-source”. I just don’t think you should be hog tied to the one supplier for the rest of your life. We’ve got a client who has spent a kings ransom on the development of their website and are lumbered with a CMS that’s clunky to use, is terrible as far as SEO is concerned and has them tied to this CMS to 2036. Or something like that.
I think the web has to get easier to use from a publishing perspective. We’re a long way from it yet, but more and more people have discovered that blogging environments such as Moveable Type and WordPress are far more than simple website platforms.
WordPess is capable of matching it with any CMS. Newspapers and Magazines are already using multi-user wordpress platforms, same goes for Universities like Harvard, and commercial sites like All Thing Digital.
We’ve just finished building a charity website with WordPress, along with the 3 micro-sites that hang off it. And people who know me, know that I hate building websites. But when you can use something as simple (and yet so powerful) as WordPress, the job becomes easy.
And as far as the client is concerned, because it’s built using an open source platform, anyone can work on it. Additionally, the WordPress community is now so large, more and more plugins are being added by the week, more and more advancements being made and there is a slew of free online information available - to help the novice or the expert.
The best WordPress developers we’ve found (and who we outsource all our work to) are here right in Melbourne. James Farmer heads up a business called Incsub. He also runs one of the largest multi-user WordPress environments on the web today - called Edublogs.
If you’re in the market for a new website, or your existing site is in need of a makeover - I urge you to consider WordPress as the platform.
By all means, let your digital agency do the design and artwork, but insist they build the site using WP. You won’t be sorry.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Simon you are spot on
Just this afternoon I started building a Wordpress site for a not-profit organisation that wants to be able to edit their website easily without having to contact me (the webmaster) each time a few words or a price needs to be changed
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 pm
PS it would be nice if you installed the “subscribe to comments” plugin
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:31 am
[...] Black’s Simon Chen wrote a really good article today on what a Content Management System (CMS) should be. He argues that, for a company considering a CMS solution for its website, “buying into a [...]
February 11th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Simon,
You know my commitment to Wordpress. There is so much I love about it
Certainly I use it for anything that’s a basic blog or corporate site with not too many bells and whistles.
But if I want really good e-commerce, I can forget it. If I want elaborate mutli-variate dynamic split testing and real-time test reporting, I can forget it. If I want editorial workflow, I can forget it… etc.
So yeah I AM in love, but it suits a purpose. There are “CMS” purposes it doesn’t really suit.
One of my frustrations with it is that there are often 5 different plugins for a given feature where one would entirely do, yet in other areas there is no plugin at all (and I suck at PHP!).
All that said, from a designer’s standpoint I love it too. Especially with Sandbox (had to mention it!) and especially with the prospect of soon not having to worry too much about IE6 and the dodgy CSS stuffing around needed to accommodate it. But I digress
-Alister
March 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Open Source provides a purpose in the marketplace but for many businesses it can be as much of a nightmare as being locked into one provider.
If I owed a business that was looking for a CMS I would defintely go direct to a CMS provider rather being at the mercy of in-house developers working on Open Source that can leave at a moments notice. In-fact from my experience I would say companies are becoming more dis-gruntled with Open Source esp. large implementations that very often go horribly wrong.
I work for CMS company based in Melbourne and we are partnering with quite a few Ad agencies. We find they are usually blown away by the features of our system as they don’t have the technical knowledge to create an advanced CMS and support it full-time. I don’t think Ad Agencies really want to do CMS implementations so if they can outsource it then it makes sense. At the end of the day they don’t want to say no to a client as their competitors claim to do some sort of digital media - be it websites, email marketing etc.
It’s funny watching the convergence though with Ad Agencies becoming more like Technology companies and Tech companies becoming more like Ad Agencies. Geuss it goes back to the Bluefreeway dream….