Understanding CMS
April 18, 2008
Author: Martin Wessel

There are advantages and disadvantages to every method of Web development, which generally show themselves in either the development or maintenance phases.

The development phase will be discussed later, since that represents only a small fraction of the total life of a site. Maintenance, of course, involves the day to day operations. Perhaps the primary question is: Will there be any changes made to the site after it is launched? The answer should be yes, of course. A completely static Web site is like a newspaper publishing the same stories over and over again. After a while, no one is going to read it. Even search engines will drop the ranking on a page if they don’t see any changes being made.

Since there will almost certainly be changes, that means that some type of content management is needed. This might be completely manual copying and pasting, template updates such as Adobe Contribute, or full database driven systems. A full manual system works if the user is comfortable editing HTML code and is even workable in a small site if a page needs to be added. But for a large site maintenance and changes can be very difficult. Template based systems can be very user friendly, but are not widely seen or supported. Database driven systems can vary in implementation, but are generally user friendly and allow even non-programmers to make changes to the site without worrying about HTML. Better yet, well supported systems allow advanced features that would require significant programming in a traditional site.

So for maintaining a site, a content management system seems a clear choice. But what about the development? After all, this is where the most obvious costs are involved. The greatest difference is in the early stages of the project, when the look and feel of the site is being developed. Both a traditional and content management site require some amount of time to create the basic files that will create how the site looks. But a content management system requires some extra code to allow it to use these files to display the content. In fact, the files for a content management system can be significantly more complex that those for a traditional site. The benefit, however, is that this extra complexity builds in a great deal of automation that just isn’t available to traditional sites. Another benefit to a content management system is inherent this separation of look and content. While a traditional site requires the files that create the display of the site to be finished before any content can be added, a content management system allows content to be added to the database while the files that control the display of the content are still being developed.

So while the look and feel of a traditional site is easier to create, the serial nature of the development means that it actually takes longer to create such a site compared to the parallel development allowed by a content management system. Combined with ease of maintenance and future proofing, a content management system is hard to beat.

But that opens the question of which content management system. After all, there are hundreds available ranging from small open source projects to monolithic commercial offerings such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. When looking at these systems a number of factors must be considered:

• Support
• Cost
• Ease of implementation
• Portability

Of these, the support for a product is key. In this case, support means not just calling customer service for help but how widespread the product is in the industry. Some measures for how popular a content management system include how many sites use the system, how many hosting companies offer the system, how many third party developers create add-ins, and how active any support forums are. When applied, these criteria quickly thin out the available options.

Once all these factors are considered, a few content management systems stand out. Of these, the Open Source content management system Joomla is a clear choice. The support is very good, with several options for paid support and a user base of almost 200,000 that actively provide peer support. It is an option available on many hosting companies and it’s underlying technologies are available on nearly every host in the world. It also enjoys an active third party development community, with almost 3000 extensions available ranging from eCommerce to social networking to podcasting. All this functionality can be added after the site is created and provides a good way to increase the functionality of a web site. Better yet, as Open Source Joomla is freely available and should an issue develop with the system a core group of programmers quickly respond and address the issue.

It seems clear that developing a W eb site with a content management system has some significant advantages not just during development but over the life of the web set. As a leading content management system, Joomla has some clear advantages over others alternatives and is the content management system of choice.