There are literally thousands of content management systems on the market. How do you decide onwhich system to buy – or do you create your own? In a market where websites need to be built faster and easier, many developers are turning toOpen Source CMS to get the job done. Unfortunately there are now thousands of CMS’s floating around the web and finding the right one has become somewhat of an ordeal.
A Content Management System (CMS) is a Web application that uses a database or other methods to create, edit, and store HTML content in a manageable way. Content is created and edited on the web in an administration portion of the web application (referred to as the Backend). The resulting content is then displayed to the viewers on the regular site (referred to as the Frontend).
Here are some of the considerations:
Core functionality
When most people think of content management, they think of creating, deleting, editing and organizing pages.
They assume all content management systems do this and so take that functionality for granted. However, that is not necessarily the case. Nor is there any guarantee that such functionality will be presented in an intuitive way.
Not all bloggingplatforms, for example, allow the owner to manage and organize pages in a tree hierarchy. Instead, individual “posts” are automatically organized by such criteria as date and category. In some cases, this is perfectly adequate. In fact, this limitation in functionality keeps the interface simple and easy to understand. However, in other circumstances, the limitation can be frustrating.
Check it out, how easy it is to complete these tasks.
The most important factor in the site should be whether or not the customer / you can use the site like they imagine it should work. So, in the long run, it will be better for your health if you pick a CMS with asimple admin interface, even if you have to customize it more to meet the customer’s needs.
The editor
The editor is the interface through which content is added and amended. Traditionally, it has also allowed content providers too much control over the design. Theyare able to customize the appearance of a page so much that they undermine the consistency of the design and branding.
The new generation of editors takes a different approach. Content providers use the editor to mark up headings, lists, links and other elements, without specifying how they should appear.
The editor should also be able to handle external assets, including images and downloadable files.
Some content management systems that are completely inflexible in their presentation.
Your content’s presentation should not be dictated by technology. It is simply not necessary nowthat we have techniques to separate design and content.
Multilingual support
It is easy to dismiss support for multiple languages. Your website may specifically target the domestic market, or you may sell a language-specific product. But think twice before dismissing this functionality.
Managing assets
Management of images and files is badly handled in some CMS’. Badly designed systems can frustrate users with poor accessibility and usability. Images in particular can cause problems. You may also want a CMS that provides basic image editing tools, such as cropping, resizing and rotating.
Also, consider how the content management system deals with uploading and attaching PDFs, Word documents and other files. How are they displayed to end users? Can descriptions be attached to the files, and is the search function capable of indexing them?
Search
Search is an important aspect of any website. Approximately half of all users start with search when looking for content. However, the search functionality in content management systems is often inadequate.
Here are a few things to look for when assessing search functionality:
▪ Freshness: how often does the search engine index your website? This is especially important if your website changes regularly.
▪ Thoroughness: does it index the entire content of each page? What about attached files, such as PDFs and Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents?
▪ Speed: some search engines can take ages to return results. This is especially common on large websites.
▪ Scope: can you limit the scope of the search function to a particular section of the website or refine search results once returned?
▪ Ranking: how does the search engine determine the ranking of results? Can this be customized by either the website owner or user?
▪ Customization: can you control how results are displayed and customize the design?
Roles and permissions
As the number of content providers on your website increases, you will want more control over who can edit what. For example, one group may need to be able to post job advertisements but not add content to the home page. This requires a content management system that supports permissions. Although implementation varies, permissions normally allow you to specify whether users can edit certain pages or even entire sections of the website.
As the number of contributors grows still further, you may require one person to be able to review content being posted to ensure accuracy and consistency in tone.
Multiple website support
With more content management systems allowing you to run multiple websites from the same installation, I would recommend this as a must-have feature.
Although you may not currently need to be able to manage more than a single website, that could easily change. You may decide to launch a new website to target a narrower audience.
And with the growth of the mobile Web, you may want tocreate a separate website especially for mobile devices. Whatever the reason, having the flexibility to run multiple websites is important.
Another feature you might not require immediately but may in future is multilingual support.
Mark
