Should you use a CMS?

All over the Net, on every open source CMS forum, you will find people asking whether or not they should use that CMS. The answer is not an easy one, but can be given in a two-word sentence, “that depends”.

If you are new to content management systems you may find it difficult to understand just what a CMS actually is. The problem is, the term has become used in so many different ways that almost anything can be called a CMS these days. If you search on Google for “what is a CMS” you get thousands of results returned. A quick scan of those results shows that the term CMS is used to describe many different things. We have Asset Management Systems, document management, records management, and the enterprise grades of CMS, as well as the subset of all this which is really where most Open Source CMS’’s fall - Web Content Management.

Wikipedia says, “A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

Plone says, “A CMS is a web content publishing and management system that allows normal content originators to create, submit, and publish their content directly within a web application/site without any development tools or knowledge of HTML” and Typo3 says, “Easy content production, no programming skills required. If you can use a computer, you can manage the content for your website.” Mambo, of course, promotes power with simplicity.

The problem with all these definitions is that people can easily think that a CMS is nothing more than a site building tool and that no experience is required. If that were true, there would be no need for any of the forums for all these projects.

If we look at the way Open Source CMS’s are promoted, we see many instances of “simple”, “easy to install”, “no HTML knowledge needed”, etc. Techsoup has been the only site I have come across that actually tells potential CMS users the hard truth. They say,“You will need to have access to someone with appropriate technical skills to install, set up, and modify the software for your needs (e.g. an external Web developer or someone in house), so this option is not without costs even if the software is free.”

Where confusion really sets in is that most web applications manage content. Open source content management systems tend to provide a means for managing different types of content, including articles, image galleries, downloads, and often, forums. Before looking at CMS’ have a think about what you want your site to achieve for you, what you want to use it for, and what skill levels you will need. Plan carefully then do your homework. Free, open source scripts provide almost everything you could want. Write a list of the features you need then compare these with the web applications that are available. And, most of all, be realistic about the skills you have and the support you may need from an open source community.