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.
Nice post. I’ve witnessed several times clients (particularly non-profits) who are extremely enthusiastic about using a CMS but when it comes down to it they don’t have the time or energy to use it. So in essence it is a waste of time and money.
I’d add too that I don’t particularly want to maintain HTML sites so if a client doesn’t want a CMS generally I won’t take on the work.
Cheers George, you broke my comments cherry on this new blog!
I agree with a lot of this – oftentimes clients just feel that they want the control over their own website – they’re scared of being beholden to a third party: the web designer, without realising that in taking on a CMS they are still at the mercy of an other: the CMS.
They also often don’t understand what having a CMS implies they ought to be doing. This is particularly true of blogs, where one of the promises to visitors is regularly updated content (I’ll be watching you here Mr. Foamcow
For the same reason I often steer them away from dating their content, because that often reveals for all to see how dusty their site really is.
That said, I’m getting leery of jobs where a CMS isn’t required becuase of, as you rightly point out, the ease it provides for making any updates myself. Also, it has to be said, the build itself is often easier too (and so perhaps cheaper, depending on site scale), particularly if the client is one of those who likes to see lots of revisions to things once the design has already moved into development.
I guess it’s horses for courses and all you can do is explain the options to the client and provide a considered view based on the project’s individual circumstances.
I agree with you to an extent – which is to say that I agree with the principal of your post: clients may think that they need a CMS but when it comes down to it, they rarely (if ever) update.
For me though, it’s a non-issue – I use WordPress for the majority of client work of this type, and I’d rather develop the site in WordPress and NOT give the client login details, than I would develop it statically.
Why? Because personally speaking the benefit of the CMS isn’t just in the client’s use of it – it’s in its functionality.
With WordPress I don’t have to create a set of custom include files, I don’t have to create new files if any pages or elements need to be added, and I cut down on a lot of manual code writing through plugins and built in WP core functions. WordPress is as important to me as a development tool as it is to me as a client site-editing tool.
Though I suppose that’s me bumming WordPress more than me giving an objective view on the use of CMS’s as a whole!
I have a few thoughts on this…
#1. I hate getting daily emails from clients who have a brochure site, and come up with new changes every day (can you change “best service” to “great service”? And then the next day, it’s can you change “great service” to “best service”? In the case of those clients, I’d rather be getting on with my life.
#2. I make new years resolutions every year with the intention of fulfilling them. Same with blog wannabes. Perhaps we should ask them to prove that they’re going to be updating often by actually doing it manually for a few weeks. But then all their lovely intentions, well, you’ve just dashed them onto the floor!
Good post. I think people will appreciate you not trying to waste their money. Perhaps you could make an ongoing comparison for your hourly rate versus their cost of a cms so they can see it going up and make a decision when things are becoming more equal.
I think that even if the client doesn’t update all that regularly the CMS is still of value since they will be able to update without contacting their web developer. Cheaper for them in hours spent and better for me in that I don’t have to worry about maintaining content for multiple clients (guess George already said that).
I would say that ExpressionEngine is the exception to this rule. It’s extremely flexible and is in fact what many newcomers to it struggle with at first.
Sean This is kind of my point. If the client doesn’t make regular use of the CMS does the cost of the developer implementing it outweigh the cost that would be incurred by the client requesting a text change every couple of months? That’s where the whole “I need a CMS” thing falls down for me. I can modify a static (X)HTML page in 5 minutes – probably the same time it would take to make the change using a CMS.
I’ve also found in cases where the client doesn’t regularly use their CMS that when they do need to make a change I invariably get a phone call asking how to do it since they’ve forgotten it all! Sometimes I even end up making the change for them anyway.
I would certainly agree with you about Expression Engine. It’s currently in my list of things that I’m getting to grips with and I think will become a regular feature in my “solutions arsenal”. I am also liking WordPress. I don’t think it’s as flexible as EE but I wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be, and that’s not a bad thing either.
Kassy Regarding #1. Totally agree. I would always advocate using a CMS for anything that’s going to be changing regularly. On the other hand, I have a minimum hourly rate charge so if they are making single word changes every day they will run up large bill fairly quickly. I always ensure that they understand this at the outset though and to date, it’s only been an issue once.
I think that’s where it’s essential to lay it all out to the client in the initial meetings/scoping phase. Oftentimes it just needs someone to suggest the reality of a situation.
Any chance you could implement the “subscribe to comments” plugin?
Man, there are so many facets to this one.
I used to work for a company where we built simple informational sites for local restaurants, pubs and the like. Every five minutes we’d get a call asking us to update their menu.
That was fine to begin with, but eventually it got to the point where I was spending so much time updating these sites that I was unable to get to the proper design work. What’s more, it was interminably boring
Eventually I made an incredibly simple CMS, which let them update their menus themselves. It was pretty inflexible, and only worked for that page, but it cut the number of calls right down.
I think this is a software problem as much as anything though. I’ve seen several instances where the CMS is so unusable that it scares the (rather technophobic) people who are supposed to update the content. If users are scared of the system (or don’t like it for some other reason) they just won’t use it.
Take WordPress for example. The dashboard seems to have far too much going on. To think this is one of the better systems out there… GAAAH!
Hi Olly. I started working on the web in a similar situation, but at that time there were no viable (at least to our small business) CMS out there so we had to. It basically ruined the company since we couldn’t maintain the sites we had built and take on new projects without increasing our staff and therefore the overhead. It just didn’t work.
I think you’re right about CMS being over complex too. I’ve rolled my own CMS that I’ve used for about a dozen sites. It’s very simple but the one thing I hear back is that the clients like that simplicity.
Hear what you’re saying about WordPress too. Though, to be fair, I’m really liking this version. Once I’ve got my head around templating so I can break out of the blog model a bit more I can see it being a valuable tool.
[...] night whilst I was struggling to sleep I came across this post by Pete Eveleigh. The post is basically an argument against always using a CMS as it isn’t [...]