One thing I get asked a lot is “Can you manage my CMS for me?”, and digging a little deeper I find it’s not the content they really want managed but the looks, or styling, of the website – which is a completely different kettle of fries.
There are many different ways of building websites, and many different types of CMS sites. Some of these are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal (all open source) CMS Made Simple, Pulse CMS, Contegro, to name a few. The platforms they are built on are often different, Contegro, for example, using ASP.Net and WordPress built with PHP and a MySQL database. All this back-end stuff means nothing to the end user. All they want is a website that they can have control over. Often this is a very disappointing experience to a person who is used to using MS Word, or Powerpoint or any other desktop application.
What the user sees of their CMS is an admin area and mostly this is comprised of a text editing box and various tools to create new pages. There is a way of getting different ‘looks’ using skins or themes, but often these are limited and it can lead to frustration. Most of these CMS systems allow you to add pages and/or page types but what can happen without a good content strategy is a confusing warren of pages and sub pages that their customers find hard to navigate, get frustrated with, and end up clicking away.
The end result is a costly website that doesn’t get hits – loses page-rank over time – gets less hits and so on in a downward spiral.
Understanding the limitations of a CMS and exactly what can be managed goes a long way to getting a satisfactory result.
Alternative – the Managed Site
The alternative is to have a “Managed” website, one where your webmaster (or webmistress) does their job and makes alterations and updates in a timely manner. The good webmaster also keeps their client updated with new developments and keeps their eye on the PR and other SEO matters. This type of “Managed” website can be a lot more flexible because the only one loose amongst the code is the website builder themselves. With the advent of CSS3 and HTML5 some pretty stunning websites can be made. Jquery coded widgets, slideshows and cool animated menu effects – all on what are known as “Static” websites. A bit of a misnomer IMO.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times when Content Management is very appropriate – such as a restaurant that wants to put up daily menu specials, that sort of thing. But with an integrated blog and content managed ‘areas’ a static website can have the best of both worlds, client input and fresh content through the blog and all the bells and whistles of a Webmaster Managed website.
