1

“Choosing a tool because the IT department says you have to” In larger businesses/corporates a CMS is always a compromise, often the requirements and spec were developed years ago and the system is not capable of keeping up with current trends. Changing a system in these circumstances can take years and costs are potentially astrononical. CMS teams end up spending most of thier time working out creative ways of providing what the business wants within the constraints of the system they have. (People who know me and where I work will know this!)

Seperating content from the presentation layer is vital as it means you should not have to rework you content if a new design is implemented – if its ina database all the better. However most sites are designed for the now rather than for the long term and layout frameworks are not considered. All to often the designer/agency (no fault of thiers) is not involved with long term running of the site and all the what if they want this and thats are not considered.

Also commisioning marketing departments(for example) often do not include the CMS teams in the design process at all. I have often been presented with a completed design and asked to retro fit it into our CMS which isn’t great.

The better CMS systems out there (I use ExpressionEngine for personal projects which is superb) are too new and considered not scaleable enough for large corporate use by reticent IT procurement teams.

posted at 11:45 am on September 7, 2010 by Simon Cox

2 Throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

In today’s economy, the promises of a new technology is not going to pass muster unless multiple stakeholders see the value in the decision. Gone are the days of software being chosen because the the IT department says you have to.

That said, I have seen technology solutions becoming the rallying point that has helped streamline disparate people and processes. I agree with your point that the process has to start well in advance of technology selection.

I think the momentum to separate content from the UX has shifted, the tricky and political part is to separate, reconfigure and distribute content at the the people layer and that can be completed through technology like a shiny and new CMS.

posted at 01:09 pm on September 7, 2010 by seamus

3 The great devide

This article is very deep. I’m sitting here trying to get down to the nitty gritty for a lot of us designers that have relied on CMSs up to this point. It really boils down to two things:

1) Comfort of knowing a tool you’ve managed to get by with and that you’ve gotten decent at molding to different needs.

2) Fear of the unknown.

As someone who never truly committed to a programming language, it’s easy to let an off-the-shelf tool dictate a site’s architecture. We’ve dabbled in PHP, ColdFusion, Asp, etc. but never truly felt empowered to build stuff that wasn’t cookie-cutter. I’m not saying we lack professionalism or an appreciation of craft. A lot of us are accomplished in front-end coding and the nuances of good visual design but there’s that chasm: where we’re currently at in our career and the holy grail (custom solutions built around frameworks like Rails).

One look at your diagram of the database structure should leave no doubt in our minds that there’s more at work than meets the eye. That perhaps we’re doing our customers a disservice by abstracting the database layer to a CMS. Can we truly feel empowered if we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes?

As a designer peering in and getting serious about development, it’s not easy; actually, it’s a little overwhelming sometimes and scary. That’s where I think the community could do a better job of helping move people like me forward. It’s about being able to communicate the message: invest in your future. Off-the-shelf isn’t going anywhere and I think a few CMSs do a nice job of adapting beyond simply title and body. But with a little effort and enthusiasm for learning, there’s a whole trove of people like me that can add value to our clients bottom lines and the web development community as a whole.

posted at 02:20 pm on September 7, 2010 by theFreelanceDesigner

5 You gotz it man!

I’ve been trying to implement a CMS at my place of work for 5 years. Requirements have come and gone, but no one, not technical or editorial teams, understand the complexities of CMS. Everything you wrote eloquently describes what I’ve witnessed and what I’ve been trying to promote: focusing on business processes, and not relying on technology to be the silver bullet.

That being said, the CMS platforms that I have encountered handle semantics poorly and are difficult to use on one end, and develop on the other. I wonder how your recommendations can be effectively followed with the limitations present in today’s CMS platforms.

posted at 03:47 pm on September 7, 2010 by gsal

6

I’ve got to second the mention of ExpressionEngine – it’s customizable content management abilities are second to none. The graphic in the article about a conference website’s content model can be perfectly re-created in EE without the slightest difficulty, relationships and all.

posted at 08:50 pm on September 7, 2010 by Sandwich

7 Realization

I am a website owner and have started to get more into SEO and content management and such. I have to say I never realized how much work this takes and to do it effectively is a whole other ballgame. Trying to keep up with this stuff.

posted at 03:57 am on September 8, 2010 by sparkyni

8 Isn't this what happens when . . .

While your article rings true, I can’t help but think that this is what Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Management, Information science and Health Informatics has been researching for decades. There are so many useful papers and best practices already out there in the ACM archives and in Trec archives. What I see happening here and in other areas of the web is that now that web development/design are facing the issues, they believe the issues are new and no one has dealt with them until now. While not all of the issues have simple solutions ( or any solutions sometimes), I think business could learn a lot from the areas of research I mentioned above. Instead of redefining the same problem we should work together in much the same way Academics are discovering that problems need an inter-disciplinary approach. I’ve seen too many web developers ignore computer science because it doesn’t teach today’s best practices, but then not learn how to program or never learn how data structures can ease their problem solving needs. The same mistakes are being made in this articles domain.

posted at 12:29 pm on September 8, 2010 by Salemd

9 Solid Information

Thank you for articulating such a straight forward approach to selecting a CMS. I’m going to add your article to my suggested reading list for anyone interested in providing true content management capabilities to their organization.

posted at 03:13 pm on September 8, 2010 by Jeri Hastava

10 Good Read

This was a good read and hit all of the tenets squarely on the head. At the end of the day it’s about business process and using tools that allow you to aide in smoothing that process. Far too often clients and businesses are confounded that technology hasn’t solved their problem. Usually with a “What is everyone else doing?” question. Without asking the question if it’s right for their own business.

posted at 04:09 pm on September 8, 2010 by Christopher Warner