Content management systems: you get what you pay for
June 11th, 2007
As with most things in life, when it comes to content management systems, you get what you pay for. There are a lot of open source solutions out there, including Joomla, Drupal and Plone (interestingly, all three of these Web sites are “dot-org”, not “dot-com”. Hmmm…) Many of these CMS’s are “free”. Just download and go.
Often, that’s when the fun begins.
A “free” CMS is something somebody else built without knowing anything about the people who will use your Web site. They say they are “customizable”, and, yes, they are right. My car is also customizable – if I can just get Ricky Craven’s pit crew to soup it up. You get the drift.
When seeking out a content management system for your Web site, it’s important first to make a list of all the things people will commonly do on your site (post news, events, jobs, upload photos, buy stuff) and make sure the CMS you select will do all of those things well. Most of the open source CMS’s will let you download a copy so you can kick the tires (sorry about the auto-racing pun, it was not intended).
When a Client signs on w/Pemaquid, we’ll go through this process w/you. Then, we can customize our own standard CMS, the Pemaquid Content Manager, as part of the overall design process.
