Do you really need a CMS?

Posted: April 17th, 2009 | Author: Foamcow | Filed under: Web Design | Tags: cms, content management systems | 12 Comments »

Content Management Systems are cool. There’s no doubt about it. The power to update your website without any technical know how is certainly empowering but in reality do your clients really need that power?

I am not advocating that a CMS isn’t the right way to go for many sites but some sites certainly don’t require one even if the client thinks they do.
There is certainly a case for keeping content fresh and I would be the first to advocate the use of blogs and the faithful old news page for ensuring a website gets an injection of new stuff from time to time.

It would also be foolish to build, say, an ecommerce site without some means for non-technical staff to maintain it. If a site needs regular updates then a CMS is the only way to go.

It has to be said that often a website, certainly a business driven site, will have a large amount of content that simply doesn’t change very often if at all. Even then, I’ve lost count of the number of sites I have built where the client has all the intentions of directing a healthy stream of prose through these pages but hasn’t done so for the last 6 months (or more!).

So why is this? Time is a major factor – it takes effort to write and many people underestimate just how much time they will need to allocate to writing, editing and posting information to a site. It’s not easy.

Another stumbling block is lack of anything interesting to say… Yes, well, moving on. Let’s be real, how many small business do actually have anything interesting to add to their site on a very regular basis?

If this difficulty exists for a simple news page then how will it extrapolate up for the content of an entire site? At the end of the day it’s highly likely that the CMS will be rarely used barring the odd staff change, the introduction of a new product or service, a change of phone number or address. Trivial stuff.

Even an “off the shelf” content management system needs installation, customising, setting up, training etc. If the end result is something that isn’t used is it worth it?

Anything more than the most trivial content changes will normally require technical expertise beyond the ability of anything but the most complex content management system – which will require it’s own expert knowledge anyway. Is it worth spending time and money learning a complex system where that time could be spent learning HTML/CSS or the money spent on getting a professional web designer to do the job? The majority of CMS packages out there are in some way restrictive – it’s the price you pay for convenience and the need to maintain consitency of design and structure. Sometimes though, we want to break the mould a little and it’s times like these that the very thing that makes a CMS attractive can be a millstone around your neck. Bending a CMS to meet an “off the wall” demand can be a real pain in the backside. We’ve all been there haven’t we?

Many small businesses really don’t need this additional time or expense. What they do need is a good relationship with a trustworthy and able web designer. Someone that they can call upon to make these minor changes and someone with the ability to create good quality work for the more adventurous updates and additions a web site.

Of course, you may decide that it’s simpler for you in the long run to build the site around a CMS as it makes it easier for you, as a developer, to manage client updates if and when they occur. You might also want to offload text changes to someone else. In this instance it is certainly worthwhile building around a CMS.

My argument is that for some, not all, sites it is more cost effective for the client to simply pay the web designer for these infrequent updates.

To that end, whenever I am meeting a new client and determining their needs I always ask the question as to how often they will update the site. I explain that at my hourly rate they are going to need to do an awful lot of updating to make the expense of being able to do that from a CMS worthwhile.

So, to sum up, a CMS can be a blessing and a curse and sometimes it’s all too easy to feel the need for one when in reality life would be simpler just to get in there and manually build pages with HTML and CSS.