Useful Tools

Choosing a CMS

There are many things to consider when choosing a CMS here are some questions to ask before you make a decision.

 

1) Who will need to be using it the most? e.g. Low technical customers, Highly technical IT staff, Graphic Designers

2) Is it easy for the person who will be using it to do basic tasks? e.g. add pages, add pictures, change text

3) Is there a company that supports it? e.g. can you pick up the phone and speak to a staff member who can fix any issues that arise. Is there a company responsible for writing the software? and are there software developers paid to develop it?

4) If it is Open Source do you need to provide any changes you make to it (enhancements or custom programming) to the Open Source community at no charge as part of the GNU licence? Does this mean you potentially never have exclusive rights to programming that is done for your company?

5) If it is Proprietary Software what sort of licence are you buying to use that software? and how is that licence enforced through encryption of code or serial numbers?

6) Websites being a visual media are best designed by a Graphic Designer.  Is it easy for a Graphic Designer to build a site in and then modify. e.g. templates, galleries
Are there parts that are difficult to change or can't be changed

7) Is it relatively easy for programmers to modify. e.g some open source systems are so complicated and have been written by thousands of different programmers that the learning curve is too steep? How quickly can modules be modified by programmers?

8) Is it easy for the user to upload and download databases into?

9) Are there updates available to the software and do you have to utilise them?

10) How quickly can a website be built by a Graphic Designer?

11) Does it have a self contained E-newsletter system and campaign tracking built in.

12) Does it have a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor built in?

13) Does it require multiple different modules written by different authors which can conflict or not work in well together or is it all designed to function together?

14) Can the template or page design be modified by a Designer or does it require programming skills.

15) Is the GUI (graphics user interface) intuitive enough that new users can easily work it out without having to read through tutorials and user guides.