So, what is a CMS? Well, it's short for Content Management System - and more, and more clients are looking to have this feature connected with their sites. However, there is a hitch. You, the client, have to create and update all the new content all on your own. Up to it?
Back in the day this was a pretty scary proposition. When ever there was the CMS conversation with a client the agency had to really pry into answering why the client wanted this technology integrated with their site. We, the agency, would simply need to know why a client would want such a thing because the answer to this question was really the fork in the road of either project success or failure. If the client had researched available options and had dedicated resources (a youthful staff member) to the project's long-term management then we had a ray of hope. If the client simply "heard we needed to have this in the site build", then you are going down a path of pain. If you didn't know what CMS stood for chances were that you didn't need it. Why?
Well, the cost of creation and implementation simply didn't outweigh the client's ability to grasp the tool, processes, and complexity of standard Open Source CMS platforms. When I write "standard" I am referring to Drupal, Joomla, Joomla/VirtueMart, Magento, Contribute, DotNetNuke (Puke), or any other .Net app you could come up with. I can still remember going into CMS tutorials with clients in sheer terror of everything they had to absorb over a number of day's training. We would even reinforce our projector-based CMS exercises with handouts that included step-by-step screen caps to walk clients through particular processes, and yet our success rate (reviewed following 6-months to a year) was still less than what you had reviving a CPR victim. Seriously. 10-1.
Unless you had a real wiz-kid in the room that the client's management had brought along, you had very slim chances of retaining knowledge within that client's head. And client, THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. The CMS platforms were BRUTAL. Developers HATED building sites with them, why the hell would things get any better when it was time for our clients to use them? Go figure. It wasn't really our fault either. It was a "good as it gets" story in the Open Source world. I remember when Joomla first came out it seemed like things were pretty easy. But then you start working through the entire development process, curve balls come up, and finally the client hand-off. You begin to ask, "WTF did these guys (Joomla, Drupal, etc.) build this CMS this way? It's not intuitive at all...". And if the developer doesn't find it intuitive off the get-go then you are likely going to have problems come client hand-off time.
Then WordPress grew up. Wow. What a difference a few years make. Last time we checked (back in early 2000's) it was a great Open Source blogging tool. Now, it's matured into this very easy and user-intuitive application that our clients LOVE using. When you look at it, it's one of the reasons the web grew as fast as it did over the past decade. It's easy-to-learn structure allowed regular Joes to set up, learn, and rapidly adopt the tool for blogging. Blogging is HUGE thanks to WordPress. With such success, folks in the Open Source community started modifying the platform to be far more flexible and accommodating to web site based content needs. Now, just as iPhone "has an app for that", WordPress pretty well has a free plug-in (maps, navigation, SEO, multi-lingual, galleries, etc.). There is not too much you can't do with WordPress. We've even done E-commerce with it's Gold Cart plug-in with great success - but this is NOT recommended for sites selling more than a handful of products.
So where is the real success? It's in the client. Since implementing WordPress as a standard go-to Open Source solution, we've seen our clients' eyes light up when they realize how easy it is to manage their content. More than once I have witnessed a client's team members saying to one another, "this is so easy, I can do this". There are no surprises or multi-step logic that need apply. If you want to change or create a Page, guess what? You go to the Pages tab, select your page from the list, hit up the TinyMC editor and you are off to the races. You might ask what all the fuss is about but then again you might of never been a client using Joomla or Drupal.
Things just go a lot easier.
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