

Web agencies should do more than just hand over a set of templates - tomd
http://www.torchbox.com/blog/2012/10/are-content-management-systems-dead

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lukeholder
I cannot stand authors that do this: "OK, OK, the CMS is not dead, I’m just
being provocative." Instant trust lost.

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vhf
Classic example of Betteridge's law of headlines[1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines>

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vhf
For the fellows currently downrating this comment, the title was _Are content
management systems dead?_ , and has just been edited to _Web agencies should
do more than just hand over a set of templates_ a few minutes ago.

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typicalrunt
I've been pondering this for awhile now, as one of my clients makes 99%-static
websites for their marketing campaigns. They currently use Drupal as their
CMS, but I see that as overkill, as most of the site is static and the layout
shouldn't be changed by anyone with publishing rights. However, you wouldn't
believe how hard it is to break through the "$CMS can do it all, easier,
faster, and cheaper" thinking that has been sold to executives.

In my client's case, the only "content" that changes are blog posts, media
(screens/videos) and, possible, promos on the front page. Everything else
stays the same, 24/7/365. There is little reason spend money on using a CMS
that can do everything, when a simple HTML/CSS/JS and a clean web framework
(Django/Rails/Symfony) will do.

What I've attempted to explain to higher-ups is that website development
should be built on progressive enhancement, because it is easy to start with
something bare and add the features (models, callouts to external services)
fairly easily and with little code. The flip side is that if you start with a
kitchen-sink approach (a la Drupal/Joomla) you will need to take away features
because the administrators will have too much power to change the site,
increasing risk that something bad will happen.

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antihero
Thing is, most companies, especially those with small budgets, don't give a
shit about crazy UX, they just want a fairly attractive site that they can
manage the pages and copy on. Then there are bigger companies with huge,
expansive libraries of content who really do need a system to manage it all.

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vhf
I think the author is mistaking Content Management Systems with something
else. Content Management is about content management. I don't quite get his
point.

 _I’m concerned that enabling a writer/journalist/marketing executive to
control every aspect of their website_ Well, IMO you can't refer to
"controlling every aspect" by "content management". If you don't want people
to modify the design, use a CMS.

 _The only part of the Google Ventures homepage that needs to be content
managed is the Here’s what we’ve been up to section._ Exactly ! Content
Management is for people to manage content.

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zem
his point is that for static content, the workflow should be [someone
generates content] -> [layout person designs a layout optimised for that
content]. with a cms, what you get is [someone designs a generic layout] ->
[content person stuffs content into it]. fine for, e.g., a "latest news" blog,
not so much for page-shaped stuff.

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ed209
Here's something I realised a little while ago:

The web _is_ my content management system.

I post to Flickr, Dribbble, Blogger, Github, Google+, Twitter etc and that
stuff is my content. I post it there so that other people will find it and
interact with it.

After that realisation, I figured why fight it and decided that the strategy
for my personal site was to collect all my content from those other places.

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stephengillie
But don't you wish you had a tool to keep track of what you've posted where,
streamline broadcast-posting, and manage conversations?

That's a market I'm surprised not to see twitter-client-makers invade - social
management systems. They've been making ones for Twitter, why not also a
Github client? And a Quora client? Have conversations with the same people
across a variety of services and sites? Let a social management system
coordinate the conversation.

Imagine conversation view looking like:

    
    
      Back-and-forth emails on top, followed by 
      A few tweets with images linked, then a 
      Github pull request, 
      2 FB messages (with other FB friends too), 
      Another pull request,
      A Facetime chat, and finally
      Some closing emails.
    

It reminds me of Wave.

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5h
Hah, try working at an agency, Building that landing page and having all the
parts editable by non-techy users is absolutely required & no real challenge,
It just takes a "homepage content item" type system with specific fields for
things like "hero image copy" or "content area 1 image/copy/icon"

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michielvoo
In my experience, the "it just takes" path of development will lead to a user
experience that breaks down fairly quickly in many content management systems.

The overall layout of a page becomes hidden behind layers of indirection in
the CMS (e.g. you edit the hero here, and then go there to select it for the
homepage, but the content for blocks on the next row of the homepage are
maintained somewhere else entirely).

As an agency, it's not that strange to offer 'marketing services' which
includes doing the content and layout for key pages of the client's website
(like author's example of the iPhone 5 section on apple.com). It can be more
cost effective to have a front-end developer update these pages if and when
they change, compared to developing a complex CMS to handle constantly
evolving page layouts.

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5h
All good points, CMS ux can get fiddly, front end editing can help, but that's
a rabbit hole i'm not keen on,

I think I've managed to keep things reasonably straightforward (e.g. for these
oddball pages all the fields are on a single page in the admin, with a nicely
segmented form), but as ever there is a lot of room for improvement, and I do
concede a time for doing things by hand occasionally :)

