john63kirk's Journal

Items to Review When Choosing a CMS

Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems represent the modern approach to building websites, offering a host of advantages over the traditional method. A good CMS program will let you update your site rapidly, even allowing users with little technical savvy to do so from any location.

Content Management System Elements to seek

Once you have decided to apply a CMS for making and maintaining your website, you will find the next choice you need to make - which CMS application is best for you? There are a great number of CMS programs available to today's web builder, but they don't all offer the same and they don't all cost the same.
Some of the most popular choices include Mamb, Joomla!, Drupal, CMS Made Simple and of course, WordPress, and all of these are freely available as part of the Open Source project. Among the proprietary applications there are also a number of options, with offerings from big companies including Microsoft and Oracle. One factor many organizations overlook is the cost-benefit comparison of Open Source software versus proprietary, works out of the box programs.

You are most likely seeking a content management system that functions well and is simple fo all users to grasp, so I will mainly focus the rest of this article on features that factor into that decision, although naturally this also depends a great deal on the goals of the website and the nature of its users.

Complexity

A top consideration for me when evaluating a content management system is the level of ease of use for others. In particular, if a website if being created for someone else, it is essential that the editors who will be using the CMS program are able to easily manae the content with the chosen CMS program. Choose one that has an interface that is simple and easy to understand, and one that uses familiar terminology. Many individuals don't see the difference between "categories" and "articles", for example, but all know what the term "page" means.

Tweaks

Next on my list of considerations is the question of simplicity of tweaking the appearance of the website. While almost every CMS program comes with templates for the initial appearance of a website, it is important to review how simple editing those templates to customize the look of your site is. Also, is it possible to substitute a different template in place of the default page, or even better to use your own templates? When making larger websites, my preferred route is to have a different base template for each specific area of a site. CMS programs that support these features helpyou keep a consistent appearance and navigation across your website.

File Systems and Management

Is it simple for editor to add files, such as pictures, to the website? Is it possible fr editors to produce galleries of their pictures, add video and audio, etc.?

If you are using tracking code to see how visitors are navigating the website, be sure to verify the ease of inserting such scripts.

Layout

How does the CMS program create navigational elements? If editors add, rename, or delete pages, are the menus changed by the program automatically?

Search friendly URL's

It is essential that the CMS create and manage search engine friendly URL's for your data to be found by search engines such as Google. In some content management systems, the program is unable to do this, resulting in file names like:

"http://www.yoursite.com/articles.php?/content-manage"

In cases like this, search engines cannot easily read your site and thus your search engine results will suffer.

And finally, which system you or your customer feels most at ease with must also be a major consideration. Taking the time to review the CMS programs on the market and the features they offer is a wise use of time that will pay dividends in a professional and well-maintained website.