Scaling, scaling, over the content blues
I wrote this a few years ago for a friend asking about content management systems (CMS) and found it while helping another friend recently. For his needs I suggested http://www.joomla.org/ and http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ instead. For this repost, I’ve updated it slightly to reflect the experience I’ve gained in the interim and to address a more generic audience.
Subject: Some considerations for evaluating a CMS and your needs
Hey there, just to follow up our phone call …
We’ve been kicking around CMS talk too, here, and here’s a few thoughts that might be useful to keep in mind when you guys are figuring out what to get and what you need.
You already know what you have; from there figure out what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to have. Define your goals and needs. List them out, and rank them in order of importance to each group of users and customers you have – internal and external.
Generally your goals and needs might dovetail into a list that meets your current needs and expands your offerings, while leaving room for more growth later. Maybe you’re looking to both redesign the site and allow a greater range of people to add content. You want your team and contributors to have varying levels of responsibility for the management of that content – without opening the floodgates to everyone editing the site, and overwhelming those responsible for managing the content.
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