Pemaquid Communications

Last night I gave an overview of content management systems (CMS) in a presentation organized by the Maine chapter of AIGA and held at Wycwah, the coworking space we share at 28 Maple Street. Many thanks to Programs Director Sean Wilkinson for helping with all the arrangements.

The idea was to give designers with limited experience coding a look at some of the many, many different CMS options available, and to touch on a few ways that dynamic content management can affect design decisions.

Plenty of Web design shops have even created their own CMS (Pemaquid has built one that we use both for “standard” as well as e-commerce projects). We’ve recently built one using the Django framework. The bottom line is to understand what’s available and choose the best tool for the job.

Below is a rundown of some of the content management systems that we discussed, as well as a few others worth highlighting.

Get Simple

Lowdown: As the name implies, it’s very simple to set up; no database required (it uses an XML file to store data). A basic template structure (you can alter the HTML/CSS to create new ones). You can only create one kind of page. Open Source.
Good for: Basic sites with limited navigational, content and layout needs.
Sites: Get Simple

WordPress

Lowdown: Easy setup (the “5-minute install” is a claim to fame), plenty of themes that are easy to customize, strong community. Clean admin user interface. Open Source. Perhaps not ideal for custom content needs or interaction design/layout, communities or e-commerce.
Good for: Blogging, subject matter experts, search engine optimization around a topic
Sites: TechCrunch, Scobelizer, Zeldman.com

Concrete 5

Lowdown: A little tougher to install than WordPress; it has a WYSIWIG interface for editing pages; chunks of content can easily be dragged from one column to another. Small developer community; many add-ons must be purchased.
Good for: Simple editing interface is great for non-technical administrators; a good option for lightweight content management needs on sites that may have high page counts.
Sites: Bigelow Laboratory, Kodiak Staff

Joomla

Lowdown: Easy setup (some hosts have a one-click install for it), lots of easy-to-customize themes, more available modules (“extensions”) for managing different types of content. Can be somewhat challenging to create custom extensions for a specific user experience. Admin interface not completely intuitive to novice or non-technical users. Open Source.
Good for: Projects with modest budgets and that don’t require a lot of customization or have specific content needs.
Sites: Maine Marketing Association, Guggenheim

Expression Engine

Lowdown:Feature-rich. Allows page-by-page customization of templates and layout. Core is free, but to obtain many extensions you must pay a $99 licensing fee, and a license for commercial projects is $249. Clean admin interface but unusual lingo (“Weblog”)
Good for: Personal sites for Web design professionals and those with heavy weight on visual design.
Sites: Stuff and Nonsense, Jason Santa Maria

Drupal

Lowdown: Strong developer community. Extensive collection of modules for most content management needs. Supports members-only communities. Plenty of themes, or make your own. WYSIWYG admin user interface for managing pages can be complex and challenging for non-technical or occasional admins to master; admin workflow can be difficult to learn. Interaction design can be time-consuming to customize for a specific user experience.
Good for: High-traffic sites, membership management, online publishing
Sites: Technology Association of Maine, Healthcare IT News,

Django

Lowdown: All right, technically Django is a framework, not a CMS. What’s that mean? A framework is something you use to build a CMS. Django’s framework provides the best performance of all (faster than Ruby on Rails) and it’s code is very modular and flexible: developers can create new modules easily in one section while designers create templates in another, and modules can be “plugged in”. It’s what we currently use at Pemaquid to quickly build custom content management solutions that don’t compromise the look and feel. Open Source.
Good for: high-traffic/high-content sites, online publishing, Web applications, social networks, rapid development of custom content management solutions.
Sites: The Washington Post, Flyfi, Lawrence Journal-World & News (they created it).

Have Clients asked you about the Usual Suspects yet? You know, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. If not, they will. When it comes to choosing a content management system, most people have heard of these options. They are backed by large, devoted developer communities.

But when it comes to managing the content on your site, there are a lot of options out there.

Tonight from 6-8pm at Wycwah, our coworking space at 28 Maple Street in Portland, I’ll be giving a presentation on a variety of “CMS’s”, geared towards visual designers with an eye towards how a CMS affects the visual design of a Web site interface?

In addition to the Usual Suspects, we’ll take ExpressionEngine, Concrete 5, GetSimple and Squarespace for a spin.

We’ll also take a look at a CMS Pemaquid has built on the Django platform.

This event is brought to you by the AIGA Maine.

Register in advance for $5 or bring $10 to the door. Free gourmet pizza provided graciously by Portland Pie.

Last week Pemaquid launched a new site for Wycwah, the coworking space we share at 28 Maple Street.

www.wycwah.com

What the heck does “Wycwah” mean? An ancient Abenaki word for “coworking”? Was it the only domain name available? Nah. But you’ll have to ask us in person sometime to get the lowdown on it.

The site is a simple construction built on the Django framework. Over time, we coworkers will be using it as a learning device as well as a source of information about our space.

The beautiful logo was designed by our friend and Wycwah member Keith Sirois; interface production and Django configuration was done by yours truly.