At some point, when planning a new project, you should take into consideration the wealth of open source and free applications available to you. Often there might be a system or framework that can deliver a solution with simple customisation and graphic redesign (re-skinning).
If you are thinking about a content management system, I believe there are three significant factors to consider: Features, administration and expertise.
I think most of the more popular open source applications such as Drupal, Community Server or Joomla share the same essential feature set, so unless there is something specific to your project there is no clear winner.
So what else can make a difference to what you decide? Well, who is going to be administrating this site? I don’t mean the developers who configure and deploy the installation. And it’s not the designers or the copywriters. I mean the day to day administration of updating links, changing images and browsing through comments to keep the site free of spam and flames.
Something you should take into consideration is the administration panel of the CMS. This is almost as important as how the actual site looks to your audience. How easy it is to make quick changes, backups and updates could become a crucial factor into how much time your administrator spends maintaining this site and how effectively it can be done.
So, you’ve had a look at a few demo’s and you think that you have found a system you like. Well who is going to install and customise it for you?
If you have a developer working with you, or you outsource your development, it is significant to know that whoever is modifying and maintaining this code is inevitably going to become an expert in whichever system you have chosen.
Whenever you want to modify some of the functionality, alter a registration process, add custom fields to the database or plug a security hole you’re going to have to dig deeper and deeper into the system you have chosen. This is such an important issue it may change the skill-set and development strategies of your technical department.
This often leads me to the ask the question: “Do you actually need a content management system?”.
The rule of thumb I use, is to decide how often the content needs to be updated. If you are updating news daily or weekly, or adding white-papers and publications a few times a month, it might be appropriate for you. But if you believe you are going to save money by developing a CMS site and maintaining it yourself whenever you want to add a new page to your website, you might want to think about the actual costs.
Comparatively speaking, it might actually work out cheaper to have a developer spend one day every month or two making changes to a static site than making changes to a CMS application that will need to be repeated every time the CMS is updated, or when an essential security patch needs to be applied.
If you are planning on developing a site, or updating an existing site, speak to a developer who can give you a balanced opinion on what is most appropriate for your application.
Is it overwhelming, to use a crane to crush a fly?