Comments on: Content Management Systems Matter More than Website Design

By: Curt Kotula

Curt Kotula — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:25:25 +0000

Tracey,
I don’t know that I would word it the same way, but I agree in principle. I believe that the single most destructive force in a website design can be planning your content and design “around” a CMS. During the critical thinking that occurs while planning the Information Architecture, Content Strategy and Design if you are stopping at every juncture and having to ask each other “but what can we accomplish with our CMS?” than you are set up for failure.

I think the halmark of a good CMS is one that is transparent to the planning process but after construction can empower your clients to edit, maintain and grow the final product of your teams hard work and imagination.

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:01:44 +0000

IA is definitely a critical part of a process, and can actually change the way businesses or organizations run internal processes (for the better hopefully). The foundation of the project must be stable and well thought out – I always use the “house” metaphor to help clients out. I tell them if we decide to build a 3 bedroom 2 story house today, it will be almost impossible to change it to a 2 bedroom rancher down the road (unless they want to tear it down and start over). And I agree, decoration is often confused with design.

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:56:58 +0000

Hey Jason,
Thanks for the comments. I agree completely, a CMS left in the wrong hands can be a disaster. I am actually shocked at how little time and energy is spent on selecting a CMS (client side) and then making sure it works well for the people who need to use it. Over complication seems to be the primary culprit in most CMS solutions out there (Ektron, Ingeniux, SiteCore), but plenty of people sing their praises – so what do I know! Or perhaps they simply don’t know that a better option exists?
As for good ones, I try not to make this a shameless plug for our CMS BigTree because I do think there are other good ones out there. Expression Engine seems to be a great option if you have a team that knows how to make it sing, and same goes for Word Press on a smaller scale.

Since I do most of the “content” management for Fastspot (the website, this blog, twitter) and I am a creative person, I just know how important a useful interface is. The CMS backend needs to be easy as well as empowering, and not intimidate or overwhelm users. Those huge enterprise systems seem more focused on technical options created from a programmer’s perspective, vs. considering their audience and what kind of experience they were providing the user. I guess I could re-title this post, “The Design of Your CMS is More Important than Your Website Design”

I will do a follow up post on why we developed BigTree, the pros (and cons) it provides to our clients, and where we see the industry headed down the line! Keep an eye out.
Cheers!

By: Jason Lancaster

Jason Lancaster — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:43:55 +0000

Tracey, I think that most of the time the CMS is only as good as the developer setting it up and the specs given to them. You can do some crazy things in a CMS that either make it too complicated for the end user or so completely un-scalable that it will never work for the long run. It’s a very fine line to walk.

One of the really cool things that lured me into following you and Fastspot was the fact that you guys have your own CMS. That obviously takes a lot of time to manage but done right could be SO rewarding for your customers. You should write more about how you guys utilize that to your advantage (or disadvantage, as I’m sure it has its pitfalls!) — I’d be very interested in learning more.

From my experience:
Good CMS = Drupal, Expression Engine
OK as a CMS = Wordpress
Bad CMS = DotNetNuke and Ektron

By: Jayvie Canono

Jayvie Canono — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:56:00 +0000

As a corollary to your CMS thesis, I submit that careful planning and well-thought-out internal and external information architectures are far more important than “design.” It’s also a pet peeve of mine when people confuse the concepts of design and decoration. Design exists on multiple levels: I can use a CMS as powerful as Drupal or rig one using WordPress’ custom post types features, but if either tool is used with little planning, it’ll reach a critical mass in the future where editing and managing content would be very difficult.

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:15:50 +0000

Thanks for the comment, and you do bring up the next issue which is – what are the good CMS solutions out there? Feel free to name names, we want to know the bad ones, the good ones, and the in-betweens. Do share!

By: @erbower

@erbower — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:46:24 +0000

Wow, so well written and so true. And yet, I have now worked for two large companies where CMS is (was), at best, clunky and difficult to use. I won’t go into specifics, but I’ve seen one implementation that involves multiple spreadsheets and a lot of manual copying-and-pasting…yikes!