A few years ago (2000? 2001?), I reviewed my first CMS for an online magazine. It was overwhelming, but I researched CMSes in general because it was important to write about it from the company’s perspective and not my own as a single user with simpler needs. The CMS, at the time, was of good quality and any business whose requirements matched what the CMS offered would be satisfied customers.
This is 2005. Since then, many CMSes have come out. What makes a good CMS? It’s not easily disposed of for another product. A company can’t decide to dump one CMS and move to another. It’s a difficult and expensive task to make the change. You want to get the right one on the first buy.
The hardest part, I believe, in getting started with a CMS is to make it work with the company’s Web site design. The design team creates the Web site, the navigation, and the pages. Once done, it integrates the CMS’s tags so when a user enters an article or news update, it goes where it belongs. It sounds simple, but it’s not. Many CMSes fail to do or show this.
Blog tools are mini-CMSes. Moveable Type and WordPress work with your design. When your design is in place, you plug the tags from the blog tool into the design so the content knows where to go. I’ve been using a blog tool since 1999 and have tried various apps over the years. It’s not an easy task to set it up on a small site like this one. So imagine the complexity involved with integrating a CMS with a business’ site.
Companies in the CMS businesses can serve their clients well if they create a demo of showing how to integrate the CMS’s tags into an existing Web site. Few companies have the time to do this with every CMS they explore.
One good feature to look for is whether the CMS hosts the content on your server. Not all CMSes have this capability. I believe most businesses would want to keep the CMS on their own server so they can maintain control. Some companies may prefer not to do this because it has greater cost savings when hosted on the CMS’s servers.
Jeffrey Veen has the best basic explanation of what a CMS should be able to do.
- Easy to install
- Easy to get started
- Create task-based docs
- Separate CMS admin from content admin
What are some features you think a CMS should have?