As a quick refresher, if you're new to the web development scene, a content management system (or CMS) is a tool that allows non-technical users to easily update the contact (text, pictures etc.) on their website easily through a web-based interface. It's a great concept that can be very helpful and save a lot of money when running a business website. We've been selling websites with an attached CMS as our primary business since 2003, but lately it's become the latest fad in web design (not necessarily a bad thing) and every company you come across is selling a CMS solution.

The problem arises because 90% of web developers are using free downloadable open source products for their clients CMS. When you do this, you're linking yourself and your clients to the development and trends of the open source CMS product you use, rather than a product you control and can make wide sweeping modifications to meet your clients needs. There are basically two major problems that occur (and there are exceptions to this rule, but the most popular open source CMS solutions like Joomla for example are often times the biggest offenders).

There are two main problems that often pop-up with open source CMS solutions:

1. Jack Of All Trades Syndrome

Sometimes features can be a bad thing, especially when everything and the kitchen sink is packed in as a feature. A CMS at its most basic level should include all the features that every user would want, and nothing more. That way you can build on the extra features that meet the needs of a particular client, insteaed of throwing a whole bunch of stuff at them that they may or may need which will just create confusion. One of the basic guiding principles of CMS design should be, "Tailor your CMS to your client and their business, don't expect your client to tailor themselves to your existing CMS".

2. Usability / Complexity

Even more significant, often times it seems open source CMS solutions were built by coders for other coders, because they are quite often overly complex and have many significant usability issues. It's important to realize that 90% of the time the typical CMS customer has limited or rudimentary computer skills. They are getting a CMS system because they aren't technically inclined. On a weekly basis, we speak with customers who have a CMS on their current site, but it's so complex to operate that they never use it because they can't figure it out. The administration for a CMS needs to be straight-forward and intuitive so that it can be picked up relatively easily.

These are two issues that we run into frequently with clients looking to move from an open source CMS solution to our inhouse proprietary solution and I see problems for CMS' like Joomla (as a solution for clients) moving forward unless these issues are addressed. Stay tuned for my next post that will examine the pros and cons of a proprietary CMS solution versus an open source one.