On Tuesday, Nov 12, 2002, at 06:38 US/Pacific, Adrocknaphobia Jones wrote: > Outside of giving it to your friend you made a site for, I can't see > implementing this is a real world application. After all, at 100 bucks > a > pop, it doesn't become very cost effective beyond 5 people. At that > point you should seriously consider a real CMS. With real security and > centralized rights management.
There aren't too many "real CMS" systems that you can buy, install, migrate all your content and maintain for a sum total of $500. Even Ektron's CMS100 - their entry level - is $599 (for ten users with a single 'base URL'). You still have to spend time / money installing it (and migrating all your static content). The bottom line is really a philosophical one - as someone else said here, there are companies that simply won't buy (or build) a CMS for whatever reason. As I said earlier, building a green field system with a built-in CMS is good. Having a project to convert a client's static site to a dynamic site with a built-in CMS is also good. CMS systems like Ektron are a great solution for a (large) number of people, especially if they have an IT group managing their website and / or contract it out to an IT group. But there are companies where they don't have that sort of IT support for their site (especially their intranet site or sites) and so a desktop tool might work better for them. Let's look at costs again just to put it in context. Ektron's CMS100 Enterprise license is $5,999 with $1,200 a year maintenance for unlimited users. That's the equivalent of 72 Contribute licenses with an additional 12 licenses each year at current prices. That will be very attractive for a lot of companies because they won't have to maintain a server-side software package. Despite these comparisons, Contribute is not intended to compete directly with CMS systems like Ektron - as I said above, there's really a philosophical difference between a custom server-side CMS and a client-side restricted editing WYSIWYG tool. For example, if a company needs publishing workflow with content approvals etc, Contribute will not be sufficient for them. If a company mostly deals with publishing MS Office documents to an intranet, a web-form-based publishing system will not be easy enough to use (because of having to login in, navigate to some location and then uploading / downloading MS Office files all the time). Sean A Corfield -- Director, Architecture Web Technology Group -- Macromedia, Inc. tel: (415) 252-2287 -- cell: (415) 717-8473 aim: seancorfield -- http://www.macromedia.com An Architect's View -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ Introducing Macromedia Contribute. Web publishing for everyone. Learn more at http://www.macromedia.com/contribute ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com
