Do you need a Content Management System? August 5, 2008
Almost all the sites we build at The Bivings Group these days use Content Management Systems (we usually use Drupal or Wordpress). However, we do occasionally build old fashioned static sites when we know a site isn’t going to be updated that often and/or it is design heavy and we’ll be charged with managing it. SEOMoz has a great chart up showing the decision tree people should use in deciding whether they need a CMS or not. The chart is embedded below and I think it pretty much nails the questions people should be asking.
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Great Blog post. I am going to bookmark and read more often. I love the Blog template … if you need any assistance customizing it let me know!
This is way too simplistic. There are lots of factors that this flowchart doesn’t even touch on.
Updates more frequent than once a month – If we use this as the sole determining criterion, we’ve just lumped a site that updates a paragraph or two on the home page every few weeks to highlight a different product or service with a site where large amounts of content are updated daily.
Running a blog – There are plenty of self-contained blogging programs (differentiated from a CMS — Wordpress’ marketing notwithstanding) which can live happily side-by-side with a static site.
Non-developers updating content – This one’s a little more realistic, but again if it’s just one part of one page on the site, it might be a lot easier to train the person(s) updating the content with enough basic developer knowledge to get by than rolling out a full-blown CMS.
Remote management without special software – This is a red herring. If a developer has access to a computer and the internet, there are ways to update (text-based) content with the software that comes installed on any computer in a pinch. If we’re talking about a non-developer editing remotely, then this is satisfied by the previous point.
Considering all of this, I’d be reluctant to use this flowchart even as a starting point, particularly if it’s going to be put in front of people with no concept of what’s involved in creating a website, with or without a CMS.
I’ve seen this chart in a few places now. Please, let’s stop spreading half-baked information like this.
This article seems like a more considered and thoughtful approach to deciding whether a CMS is right for a project:
http://website-content-managem.....quirements
Warren - sure the chart is simplistic. However, I think it does hit on the primary questions you need to ask yourself when making the decision.
Thanks for your comment.
You’re right. It does hit on them. It hits and runs, without ever digging deeper into each question as is required before you can reasonably say “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t” need a CMS.
To borrow a term from science, this is so bad it’s not even wrong.
Interesting thought, but I think it leaves out some very important points - just to mention security . . . with Drupal you would have a dedicated desk who takes care of that and informs you about security issues, where they apply and usually provides the code to close them. Don´t know how WP handles security, but I guess to do it inhouse would be much more effort and responsibility.
Todd - great post. Love the chart. I’m going to have to use it with some clients.
I’ve been using WP for most of my sites - http://www.jimdemint.com, http://www.greshambarrett.com, http://www.lukerankin.org.
So far I haven’t needed to do anything that it wouldn’t handle…then again, I haven’t had to do anything too funky yet.
Wesley - the dirty little secret about campaigns is that most of them don’t produce a great deal of content. So a lightweight solution like Wordpress is great in most circumstances.
I like the sites you’ve built, particularly Rankin.
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