Ever since websites have existed, there has been the need to provide a way for non-technical people to update their online content. This one simple issue has employed thousands over the years. Here is the funny thing though. Technical people end up designing the “non-technical” content management systems and thus you end up with a tool that “anyone” can use but in the end, firms hire a technical person to “manage” the CMS. It seems that after a new CMS roles out in it’s simple form, it doesn’t “do enough” and then the feature creep happens at the expense of simplicity and elegance for the non-technical user.
Here are some of the issues that I see with the big content management solutions. They are expensive and most systems have too many features you will never ever use but again, you still pay for them. Also, in every case, you end up having to hire a consulting firm to install, configure, and customize it for you. I have first hand experience with several firms who have gone down the road of purchasing one of these beasts. They are typically quoted a ridiculous price like $250,000 plus annual support and licensing dues. But in the end of a year, they are pushing or exceeding $1,000,000 after required hardware, consultants, optional plug-ins and widgets are added to the mix.Now, I’m sort of comparing apples to oranges here because these system requirements are usually more than just a simply CMS but it is unimaginable to me to see how you can justify prices like these for what boils down to providing a tool that allows you to update and manage content on your Intranet or Internet.
Here is my question. Can anyone claim to have either used or designed a simple CMS? Clearly the answer is in the eye of the beholder. However, I’m really interested in seeing/demoing such a tool. It can be written in ColdFusion, PHP, .NET, Java, RUBY, Python or any other language. I’m eager to get my hands on one.
It would be wonderful if it were open source. It would be fine too however if it’s proprietary but only if it’s simple and elegant and the price reflects its simplicity.
Wishlist Features:
- Options for contributors to be pulled from either a remote database table or via LDAP or manually added. Roles of who can do what.
- Approval tree routing of content option
- Ability to create and edit pages keeping track of all edit changes with ability to roll back.
- Spell-check (firefox now has built in spell check so this is becoming less important over time)
- Ability to paste in images using a wysiwyg style editor. People know how to use Word already so updating a web-page should be similar.
- Ability to add/edit/delete/move contributed pages
- Ability to upload files
- Ability to sort any subdirectory alphabetically, by creation date, by last edit date, and/or ad hoc
- No recurring license fee
- Easy to install and configure
- RSS feeds optional per content grouping
I would be extremely happy if there was a tool that did 90% of this and was INTUITIVE, ELEGANT, and most importantly, EASILY ADOPTED by the mass amounts of people that don’t have the time or interest in learning yet again another program.
To date I have evaluated or used more than 10 and haven’t found a single one that I can imagine a small law firm feeling comfortable managing their content without hand-holding. In the end, that’s the target market that has been neglected. The small businesses who can’t afford an IT group. Can’t afford $500,000 just so they can have a postcard site. Can’t afford to pay a consultant $100 an hour for weekly ad hoc updates.
I’m really hoping that in the last year since I’ve evaluated CMS tools, that something has cropped up that will take the Internet by storm. Google Pages is a nice concept but after reading through the documentation, it again is a system that thousands of consultants will start selling their services around because the average small company won’t be able to figure it out.
Please chime in if you have a CMS candidate you would like me to try out.
Vince Collins
