Rob C
Director responsible for Marketing, Branding, Visual Identity and Design at Zocalo Press
What features do you expect in a CMS, over and above the obvious?
I've been developing a CMS for a few years. It's emphasis is on design and flexibility -- if you wanted to pigeon-hole it, you could definitely call it a designer's or artist's CMS.
So my question is really from that perspective. As a design or a web site owner who wants greater than average flexibility from their web site, what would you expect from your CMS?
By 'the obvious' I mean things such as 'ease of use', 'robustness', etcetera. They're a given.
Thanks in advance for answering! I have a blog dedicated to this CMS here:
http://blog.renaissancecms.com
Good Answers (8)
Randall G
Web Developer and Project Manager at netsperience [ Drupalist ][ SMO strategist ][ writer ][ trainer ]
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Hi Rob,
I use Drupal for about 80% of my projects, Joomla for about 15% and the other 5% are just whatever.
I am curious why you are developing a CMS when so many great ones exist? It is a good programming exercise, but I do not think it's necessary to reinvent the wheel.
If you have ideas about how to augment the existing CMSs you can contribute a module/extension or plug in project.
What I want from a CMS:
1. Standardization - web standards, cross-platform/browser, also ease of motility from one hosting server to another, and moving components from one particular site to another.
2. Security - protection of user data and hack-resistant
3. Robustness and scalability (I have met with developers who create Drupal sites capable of 1,000,000+ page views/minute)
4. Extensibility - can I hook into the core for plug ins and customizations?
5. Support - an active user and developer community, forums etc
6. Support of rich media, video audio Flash etc.
7. Open source GNU/GPL
Links:
Clarification added November 5, 2008:
oh dear, I think I'm seeing double!
Peter R
President Flash / Web Developer PR-Interactive
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I expect it to be very customizable and additions simple. I expect seamless intergration with the front end.
Any that control Flash marketing windows.
Ability to rewrite URLs for SEO
Ability to upload any size / format photo and still work.
Ability to set a CSS standard that will not break or be overwritten.
Multiple PDF, Image, Video upload with one click.
Reporting
Archiving
Links:
Hi Rob,
I think Randall's list is pretty comprehensive. I use Expression Engine as that's the closest I've found to a "Designer's" CMS.
Although it's already been mentioned I think the big failing of many CMS is good media asset management tools.
It's Expression Engine's big downfall but I haven't seen it done well in any of the applications that I've tried.
Multimedia content is so important now to most sites that a class-leading media management feature would be a real selling poitn for a lot of people that are currently undecided on which CMS to invest their time in.
That's my 2 cents! : )
Cheers,
Liam
Links:
Hi there. I've worked with all sorts of CMSs, including Joomla!, Stellent and bespoke ones designed for individual clients. It's amazing how many don't have a decent preview facility, so you can't actually see how it will look when live.
You need it to create SEO-friendly URLs (why IS that so difficult in Joomla!?) and to be able to add links, metadata and media easily.
It would be good if the CMS is intuitive as well. Joomla! scores pretty low on that front, plus another one I'm using at the moment where you've got some navigation at the top and the rest you have to hunt around for within the page itself.
A few checks and balances are useful - such as a limit on file sizes to stop someone accidentally uploading a 5Mb picture or something.
That's all I can think of off the top of me head!
Sue
What I see in my CMS selections, this is what is perceived as important (each with different weights by different customers ofcourse):
Integration
A good CMS should be able to integrate in an existing architecture. So its important that a CMS-user can easily define connections to other databases, webservices, filesystem etc. The CMS can pull content from external systems to publish them in any desired format to any desired channel. But also the other way: the CMS push content to the external systems.
Multi-channel publishing
It must be easy in the CMS to publish the same content to different channels (web, mobile, narrowcasting) without having to recreate content for each channel.
Extensibility
The CMS must be easy to extend with new functionality. Preferably through a component based architecture where functionality can be added using plugins by using an OSGi-like framework, examples are Salesforce and Joomla. But with the latter the platform migration caused plugins developed on earlier versions to become unusable.
User-friendly
In the end, the people on the workfloor will use the system, so it must have a clear user interface that enables them to easier maintain content.
Personalization
This goes two ways: publishers must be able to determine what a visitor may see (e.g. when in a customerportal), but also the visitor wants to be able to determine what he sees (a la iGoogle).
CMS Editors must be able to easily personalize without technical knowledge. This has been done extremely well in the CMS: GX WebManager, see free download on www.gxdeveloperweb.com
Web 2.0 / Publishing
This is actually a heavy discussion going on in CMS land:
Traditional publishing (pushing content out from within the organization) where the organization has full control of what can been seen on the webpage VS Communities (as can be seen by such functionalities as blogs, forums etc on communities like Facebook, Floxtar and also here on LinkedIn), where the organization has significantly less control over what is shown on the site.
Some people argue that there should be two different CMS'es for this, but ofcourse you are free to combine them ;)
SEO
Well, kinda obvious, but CMS users must be easily able to finetune stuff like metadata, sitemap, friendly urls etc. Also your CMS must by default generate SEO friendly XHTML.
Developer community
In order for your CMS to be really successful, you MUST create a significant and active developer community. You can do this by making the system really really open (either just open source, or otherwise a very extensive API).
Becoming more important:
Archiving (being able to get the exact content that was shown to a certain user on a certain time).
Furthermore important: Security, use of open standards, must be scalable, online (wiki, chat,forum etc)/telephone support
well, thats all I think of so fast...good luck, if you have more questions let me know :)
Cheers!
I've worked with a fair few CMS tools in my life, and the best without a doubt is the bespoke CMS I had developed for us on our own requirements. Ours uses SQL, so my requirements are drawn up around that, but here are my thoughts off the top of my head, for what they're worth
- The ability to to create and apply header tags
- Wysiwyg functionality
- An FCKEditor is a given
- Dynamically populated header tags based on specified form fields (I.e. product name, geo location, key words etc). Hell, dynamically populated content makes everyones lives easier
- Full control of CSS, without having to learn how to code
- Different levels of admin rights. With editing authorisations signed off by a super user
- Control. Despite everyone saying they want full freedom to do what they want to do, the reality is that if you throw anyone but a web designer at an unregulated CMS, you'll end up with a bomb site on your hands. If people want full flexability, let them use Dreamweaver. The reality of the corporate world is that every page and all content should have standardised continuity. That way it's harder for people to break
- HTML editing option. Having said that, this never hurts!
The main features I think are borne out of the end users:
Designers & developers want:
• Easily customisable templates
• Ability to build bespoke assets
• System must be extendible
• Content editor must be XHTML compliant wysiwyg
• Full control over back-end
• Easily administration of admin/user management
• Pages/content must be quick to create
• Full SEO features built in
• Ability to create 'drop zones' for client to work in content areas
Clients want:
• A really simple and intuitive user interface
• Quick access to repetitive tasks
• Drag-n-drop page designer/content editing
• User permissions with checkin/checkout management
• Draft & live website separation
• Simple SEO implementation
• Seamless publishing & workflow
Links:
Patrick P
Creative Director, Jade Creative
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Wow, could be a big answer but I won't bother, it seems a consolidation of other answers will give you a great list to go through, good lick with that.
In short - it really depends who will be using it. Not very web savvy? then kept it all simple. Quite web savvy? then you can offer more. One area that must be adhered to is keeping the system search engine friendly. What is the use of a fantastic site backed by a brilliant CMS if no one ever see's it?
Of course there are the usual suggestions - security, community, cross platform, web standards, and so on.
It's been asked, but I have to ask as well, why reinvent the wheel?
Personally, our agency has dealt with a huge array of CMS options. Yes, we've used Joomla! just like everyone else, but I have to say it is not very flexible at all.
Our CMS of choice is without doubt Typo3, much more flexible and with over 500 extensions you can plug-in and cutomize.
If you want simple, then go for CMS Made Simple, they really mean that.
Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth. Although in today's financial climate does that means it is a meager 1 cent worth? Not sure, you be the judge.
More Answers (7)
Denice M
President at MacDonald Consulting Services
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The ability to handle all types of rich media, provide database capabilities and enhanced metrics reporting.
Thanks for asking Rob.
Best
Denice MacDonald
Links:
Randall G
Web Developer and Project Manager at netsperience [ Drupalist ][ SMO strategist ][ writer ][ trainer ]
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Hi Rob,
I use Drupal for about 80% of my projects, Joomla for about 15% and the other 5% are just whatever.
I am curious why you are developing a CMS when so many great ones exist? It is a good programming exercise, but I do not think it's necessary to reinvent the wheel.
If you have ideas about how to augment the existing CMSs you can contribute a module/extension or plug in project.
What I want from a CMS:
1. Standardization - web standards, cross-platform/browser, also ease of motility from one hosting server to another, and moving components from one particular site to another.
2. Security - protection of user data and hack-resistant
3. Robustness and scalability (I have met with developers who create Drupal sites capable of 1,000,000+ page views/minute)
4. Extensibility - can I hook into the core for plug ins and customizations?
5. Support - an active user and developer community, forums etc
6. Support of rich media, video audio Flash etc.
7. Open source GNU/GPL
Links:
Bill N
Experienced, productive, and affable IT professional
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You may want to have versioning, so that one can revert back to prior versions of content.
Do you have locking, to preclude concurrent changes to a piece of content?
Your choice of CMS should be governed by the needs of the niche for which you are working.
Don't try and tell me that a CMS that works well for a shoe-shop is going deliver the goods for a charity, for a travel agent and for local government organisation.
Each has niche has different needs, yes, you can install plugins that do this and that very well but you just lose more and more control as you go on.
Which is the right CMS for your niche? Go and ask your customers.
Don't have a niche? Well you are a jack of all trades so you use a CMS of all trades.
Perhaps the question you should address is "What will my CMS have to deliver in 2 years time?". That'd open a lot of cans of worms.
Jeff J
Managing Director at Weborizon, Online Business Consulting, Internet Marketing
You need Community features if you want your site to compete with the rest of the world.
So, user accounts need to all be integrated together.
No one wants to have multiple user accounts on the same site. So your CMS needs to be able to either integrate nicely, keeping just a single login, or be flexible enough to add new functionality as it comes out.
I'd give Expression Engine a try. I've used Joomla and Drupal, and others. I've found Expression Engine to be the easiest to use. There isn't a big learning curve, or an entire framework to understand, it's very straight forward.
If you could combine features of ExpressionEngine and Magento that would be awesome!
