>- see footer for list info -<
>>Why would ANYONE pay serious shedloads of cash for
a high-powered CMS that requires lots and lots of training

In my experience, a lot of clients not only wont pay anything for a CMS that
requires lots and lots of training, they wont even accept it when you pitch
it to them (we pitch more than one CMS), they would rather pay a lot more
for one with less training....


>>If someone wrote a website CMS tool only using Word,they'd be ROLLING in
it!

Its been done, cant remember the name at the moment, will get back to you on
this...


>>Remember, clients are not always the best judges/users/pickers of a CMS.

No, but they're the one sending the purchase order, and if they dont like
it, they will probably go with the company pitching the system they like....


Just based on my experiences..... im sure other people have had differing
experiences...

Kerry

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Paul Johnston
Sent: 19 November 2004 09:52
To: Coldfusion Development
Subject: CMS design WAS: Re: [CF-Dev] Starting Farcry


>- see footer for list info -<
On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 08:46, Damian Watson wrote:
> >- see footer for list info -<
> CFUG suggestion... someone to talk about CMS design methods.
>
> Reasons for suggestion:
>
>     * too many CMS I've seen are perplexing for the user (Paul I take
>       your point but disagree, CMS should be for non-technical users,
>       techie stuff can be added for special authorised tech heads)

Red Rag - Bull
I never said that a CMS shouldn't be for non-techie users, just that the
purpose of a CMS is managing content (hence why it is called a Content
Management System).  Why would ANYONE pay serious shedloads of cash for
a high-powered CMS that requires lots and lots of training (various
oracle products come to mind) when they could just do it themselves?  To
be honest, most of the money for the higher end CMS products comes out
of training and support.  So, you build something and include training
and support!!!

It all comes down to when talking about web CMS products, what does the
client want?  To be honest, I've never seen a client say "I want to be
able to go to the site, and if I don't like something have a word
interface to change it" although I've heard clients say "I want to
change things in word, and it just work on the site".  It's mostly
developers who think this situation is important.

With a Web CMS, most clients say (paraphrased) "I want to be able to
change stuff (Content) on the site, add pages, images, documents (etc),
and maintain a consistent look and feel".  When you hand them a tool
where you can change the actual look of the page in the site, that
*doesn't* in my book say "this is for non-techies" that says "this is
for designers".  If you stuck one of those tools in front of me, for my
company, I'd walk away and not pay for it. Why? Because it's too
complicated. I have to think about design and everything else.  Whereas,
if you say "change/add text here, it appears on the site" it's FAR LESS
COMPLEX.  Changing content is NOT about changing the site, it's about
changing the CONTENT.

(Rant almost over)

In the end, if we push a product, that's what they will buy (if they buy
at all from us).  If someone wrote a website CMS tool only using Word,
they'd be ROLLING in it! Why? Because everyone knows Word, everyone has
Word and it will be a small jump to adding a Web CMS to it.  It's not a
website CMS tool, it's a word processing tool. BUT it's a smaller jump
than "Here you go! Just login, and you can move anything around and
stick anything on the page you want".

Remember, clients are not always the best judges/users/pickers of a CMS.

>     * most of us I bet have had to debug/ rebuild someone else's CMS and
>       lost a lot of hair

What we're talking about is standardised tools here.  Most CMSs I have
come across have been "I built this 3 years ago and copied it" or "I
built this one using this methodology".  Where I'm coming from is the
full website creation (Enterprise) CMS tools if you will.

> One of the biggest failures I see is not necessarily in the code but in
> the UI- when it comes to admin sites they throw the designer overboard.
> A talk for programmers about CMS interface design + CMS architecture
> design would be really useful I think (Niklas?).

UI design? Niklas? ;)

I actually think a talk on design rules for websites would be good
though!

Paul

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