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Website CMS questions
by Reegan D. Breu
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Hello, This is my first time posting to the forum. Our organization plans to implement a website content management system in 2007. We are a national non-profit organization with under 20 staff. We have decided to explore commercial options rather than open source given our limited in-house technical capacity to work with an open-source product (no programmers on staff). Currently, I am trying to find a listing of the more "tried and true" commercial CMS products with some reviews. I am aware of the CMS Watch Report, but we do not have a sufficient budget to purchase this. I have several questions that I am hoping you can help me with: 1. Can anyone suggest a site that provides a (fairly) comprehensive list of these systems? 2. What systems have a longer and more stable track record?
3. Are you a smaller organization that has implemented a commercial website CMS? What product did you implement? How has it worked for your organization? In advance, thank you very much for your assistance. Reegan D. Breu Manager, Information Services Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
Access over 1 million songs - Yahoo! Music Unlimited Try it today. _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Bob Doyle
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Hi Reegan,
There are many directories of CMS (I have identified a couple of dozen directories and nearly 2000 branded CMS with websites). See http://www.cmsreview.com > Resources > Directories. I wrote about this for EContent. http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=14534 A few of these directories offer product comparisons. At CMS Review, we separate the open-source from the proprietary. Besides CMS Review, see http://www.cmsmatrix.org. Be aware that you can get the open-source CMS hosted for you, so you need minimal in-house IT support. See http://www.opensourcecms.com for references. Hope this helps, Bob. Reegan D. Breu wrote:
-- Bob Doyle Editor In Chief, CMS Review - http://www.cmsreview.com Technology Adviser, CM Pros - http://www.cmprofessionals.org Contributing Editor, EContent Magazine - http://www.econtentmag.com/About/AboutAuthor.aspx?AuthorID=155 President and CEO, skyBuilders - http://www.skybuilders.com 77 Huron Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: +1 617-876-5676 Skype:bobdoyle _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Ed Kapuscinski
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I would strongly recommend checking out the CMS Report, while it doesn't go too strongly into nitty-gritty details of development (like the fact that Rhythmyx has man undocumented features, some of which are NOT covered in training), it does give you a good vendor-neutral review of most of the leading commercial offerings.
It's available through http://www.cmswatch.com/ .
Ed
On 10/31/06, Austin, Darrel <Darrel.Austin@...> wrote:
> We have decided to explore commercial options rather than _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Tony Byrne - CMS Watch
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Hi-
Ed
makes an excellent point about vendor documentation.
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Ed Kapuscinski
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Yes, user forums would be great things in many cases...
On 10/31/06, Austin, Darrel <Darrel.Austin@...> wrote:
> Hi- _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Rickard Öberg-2
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I'll bite.
Austin, Darrel wrote: > My biggest gripe with most commercial CMS products we looked at was a > seemingly huge imbalance between their sales staff and their development > staff. Our ratio is 1 sales guy and 10 developers. > Am I prejudiced? Probably. That happens when consumers get burned. ;o) Prejudiced? Probably, but maybe you have the views you have because the options you've looked at fit the description you gave. Does that mean that all fit that description? Of course not. > Seems to me that one main advantage of OS products is 100% of the effort > goes into the product's development. If a customer uses an OS product and pays programmers to do customization for their needs, 0% is going to go to product development. If a customer pays an OS product support company to get help, 0% of that is going to go to product development. If a company provides support for an OS product, then what is their incentive to improve the product in such a way that customers do not need to buy programmer or support hours to use it? To me this is one of the biggest flaws with the OS business model in general: there's no incentive for the developers to make it easy to use so that customers can be independent and self-reliant. If one makes money doing customizations and installation/configuration, then there is incentive to *not* make it easy to use. By comparison, a company using a commercial license (such as myself) and which wishes to minimize support and customization needs (because we want to dedicate our hours to develop the product, which we believe is in the best interest of us and the customers) has a clear incentive to make it as easy to use as possible. And this is, in fact, one of the main reasons why our customers find our product to be way way WAY cheaper than others, including OpenSource alternatives: because they don't have to spend tons of cash on getting consultants to make it work and/or maintain it. > In the end, I think the best CMS is one built to fit an organizations > specific needs. Just as having a programming language for each task would be perfect, as it would be specifically adapted to that particular task. Of course, you'd have no IDE's, no libraries, no books to help, and there's all sorts of other things you have to build yourself. But other than that it would be the best thing to do. > I understand that that isn't always a viable option from > a time/cost standpoint. In the end, however, I doubt a company is going > to find that they can use a CMS product (OS or commercial) out of the > gate with zero customization. (I love this part) 80%+ of our customers do zero customization of our CMS product to create their websites. It's all point and click. Unless you call that "customization" as well. But there's no coding necessary, and no creation of stylesheets or such things. > Again, in the end, this is all MHO. Feel free to disagree... I'm not so much disagreeing (because from your perspective with your experience it is quite possibly perfectly true), as much as I'm saying that what you describe is not necessarily applicable to all tools out there, ours included. We use about 70+ OpenSource libraries in our product, so it's not that I don't like OpenSource. I'm just a little worried that people say that something is "cheap" because it's "OpenSource". Well, heck, we have cut our licensing prices by at least an order of magnitude since we can deliver functionality that is implemented using OpenSource libraries, so our customers get those warm and fuzzy OpenSource benefits as well! best, Rickard _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Rickard Öberg-2
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Austin, Darrel wrote:
> This statement can be easily spun in the opposite direction: > > There's no incentive for commercial CMS vendors to make their products > easy to use so that the customers can be independent and self-reliant as > that takes away from their lucrative annual 'maintenance and support' > contracts. Not at all. All customers will want "maintenance" in order to get bug fixes and new features even if the product is easy to use. Those things are unrelated. As for support, again, we prefer to spend our time doing development instead of support, so making it work and easy to use is in our best interest. We have a fixed support fee, so the less they call, the better. How do you get people to call us less? By having the product be easy to use, bug-free, and by having good documentation. So the incentive to make the product easy to use and require as little support as is possible is built-in. Can you say the same thing for a model based on OpenSource (i.e. no licensing costs)? I would be most interested in hearing about it! (really!) > In the end, make a good product. That's all that matters. But that statement ignores the underlying problem: does the model promote making a "good product". If I was the manager of a company that provides support for an OpenSource solution, and I wanted to maximize my profits, why oh why would I make a "good product", in the sense of making it easy to use so that customers does not have to use our services? If services is where I get the money, that seems backwards. Now, if I as a manager has a conscience (which is not a given these days), I might be inclined to do what is good for the customers anyway, and make it easy to use. But, that WOULD impact the bottom line of the company, as there would be less income from services. If customers were able to do everything on their own, where is the income? Explain that to me. >> 80%+ of our customers do zero customization of our CMS >> product to create their websites. It's all point and click. > > You might be absolutely right...I haven't used your product. That said, > every time I see the 'point and click' statement in software sales > literature I become a bit suspect. More often than not, it's anything > but 'point and click'. Or, it may be point and click, but > technically/more accurately it's: point and click and point and click > and point and click and point and click and point and click and point > and click and test. Oh, you want it to work THAT way? Well, > simple...just tap into our API and write your own module. ;o) See, that's where the above reasoning kicks in: since the best thing for us would be if none of our customers EVER calls us, we actually work VERY hard to ensure that every click counts, and that the number of clicks necessary to accomplish a particular task is minimized. That minimizes the amount of support we have to do, which, in the end, benefits our company directly. Isn't it amazing what a good model can do to encourage beneficial behaviour... > That's fair. Again, I've just been speaking from my own perspective and > from that of other's I've dealt with. Which is natural. The problem is that you generalized it to cover more than was possible, and which made it false. Which is, again, natural. Most people do this at times. It's still wrong though. > Well, hold on...I never meant to imply it's 'cheap'. No matter the > product, it costs money to maintain, train, customize and deploy. No > argument there. With a CMS, my guess is that one's expense is going to > be moreso with internal staff getting them able to maintain content than > with any specific technology (depending on the org, of course). Indeed... and yet your initial comment was: > The only difference between OS and Commercial CMS products is that you > pay more for one up front. ;o) Which, considering what you said above, is hence completely irrelevant. And if maintaining content is going to be the main expense, would you prefer one that is easy-to-use or not? If you want one that is easy-to-use, then by my arguments you are more likely to find it in the commercial than in the OpenSource world, simply because there's a natural incentive in the commercial world to make it so (at least if the business model is similar what I've described; you can probably make it both licensing-driven *and* support-driven if you want to!), whereas in the OpenSource world it seems that making it easy-to-use would effectively be to shoot yourself in the foot. If I am wrong here, and there are OpenSource business models that get around this, I'd love to hear about it! > I don't think it's ever fair to say OS is cheaper than Commercial or > vice versa by default. There are so many 'it depends' involved. Yup, as always. My curiosity right now is whether there's some inherent traits in the commercial model which makes the total cost of ownership lower than that of an OpenSource model. > My recommendation is based solely on the 'try it out' phase. You can try > OS software without too much long-term commitment. A lot of commercial > software has that overhead of the initial licensing cost. I've seen a > lot of 'enterprise software' in use not because it's good, but because > 'well, we paid for it'. Sure. > I got a few replies stating that not everyone has the money/time for the > 'try it out' phase. I find that absurd. When shopping for software, it's > really hard to come up with a proper list of needs until one actually > gets to experience the product. No amount of planning can replace some > hands on interaction with the product. ABsolutely. Which is why most people who try our stuff, that "point 'n clickety" thing, get it without bothering with endless configuration files and script modifications that so many others offer as the user experience. YMMV though. > I'd never buy a vehicle without taking it for a test drive, yet I see > companies purchasing software all the time and then dumping it in the > hands of IT and end-users. Yeah, that's stupid. > Now, if any of you are a commercial CMS company that makes a quality > product, sells it at a fair price, offers plenty of support and > peer-to-peer channels for said support, then feel free to ignore all of > my ranting. ;o) Don't worry, I am ;-) best, Rickard _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Rickard Öberg-2
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Austin, Darrel wrote:
> Of course you can. Like I said, this can be spun in any direction. > > For the OS spin: > > OS software is a product of developers. Developers who spend time > working on the product not for monetary gain, but for pride. They take > pride in their craft and strive to produce good, solid, usable products > not just to please any specific customer, but to please themselves. This is a psychological explanation and not a business explanation. Having been the founder of JBoss you must forgive me if I am not entirely convinced by the "for pride" argument. "Please themselves", now, that I can agree with though ;-) > Of course, the more practical spin is the exact same one you used: > > OS developers don't want to spend time supporting their product anymore > than commercial vendors do. As such, they want to write a good, solid > application to reduce the amount of time supporting end users. Again, that is a psychological explanation and not a business explanation. At the end of the day you cannot eat "pride" or "satisfaction". So, considering what you say, since the explanation is thoroughly psychological and not economical, whether or not an OpenSource product is good or not is entirely dependant on the good nature of the individuals instead of being part of the business model. But wait! If those same good natured individuals who love making good products chose to use a commercial license for their work, then they would be able to do everything they did before, but now also get paid for it! They are still good natured and take great pride in what they do, sorta like what I do I guess, and yet now they can also get paid for their services and with a model that ensures that they can spend closer to 100% of their time developing the product instead of doing something else, like consultancy or support, to feed the kids. >>> In the end, make a good product. That's all that matters. >> But that statement ignores the underlying problem: does the >> model promote making a "good product". > > I'm not hear to argue whether or not OS is a viable business model. It > clearly is. Just as commercial software sales appears to be a viable > business model. To write one or the other off is just silly. Oh, it is clearly a viable business model. People are making mucho money from it, no doubt. I just don't understand how it benefits the customers, is all, at least in this case (CMS's that is). >> Indeed... and yet your initial comment was: >> > The only difference between OS and Commercial CMS products >> is that you > pay more for one up front. ;o) > > Smilie = typically meant to imply a statement was said partially in > jest/toungue in cheek/not meant to instigate an all out debate. (though > the debate is enjoyable and seems to be fairly civil thus far... ;o) Ah, ok, I see. So, if that was in jest, does that mean that in your view there is NO difference between OS and Commercial CMS products? ;-) best, Rickard _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Peter D. Dresslar
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I'm not sure we'll actually have a winner to this debate, since it goes
back to a time when there was still Star Trek and it was still Good. -Peter Austin, Darrel wrote: >> So the incentive to make the product easy to use and require >> as little support as is possible is built-in. Can you say the >> same thing for a model based on OpenSource (i.e. no licensing >> costs)? I would be most interested in hearing about it! (really!) >> > > Of course you can. Like I said, this can be spun in any direction. > > For the OS spin: > > OS software is a product of developers. Developers who spend time > working on the product not for monetary gain, but for pride. They take > pride in their craft and strive to produce good, solid, usable products > not just to please any specific customer, but to please themselves. > > Of course, the more practical spin is the exact same one you used: > > OS developers don't want to spend time supporting their product anymore > than commercial vendors do. As such, they want to write a good, solid > application to reduce the amount of time supporting end users. > > >>> In the end, make a good product. That's all that matters. >>> >> But that statement ignores the underlying problem: does the >> model promote making a "good product". >> > > I'm not hear to argue whether or not OS is a viable business model. It > clearly is. Just as commercial software sales appears to be a viable > business model. To write one or the other off is just silly. > > >> Indeed... and yet your initial comment was: >> > The only difference between OS and Commercial CMS products >> is that you > pay more for one up front. ;o) >> > > Smilie = typically meant to imply a statement was said partially in > jest/toungue in cheek/not meant to instigate an all out debate. (though > the debate is enjoyable and seems to be fairly civil thus far... ;o) > > -Darrel > > _______________________________________________ > cms mailing list > cms@... > Subscription controls: > http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms > Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] > http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html > http://www.cms-lists.org > > > _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Erik Hartman
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Peter,
I like your conclusion. And yes, the discussion here is getting a bit personal and 'religious'. >From the past I know that most list members don't like that. Better take your personal comments off list, please. In July this year there was a similar discussion that I tried to summarize at our CM Pros Benelux blog (http://cmprosbenelux.org/2006/07/22/open-vs-closed-source-content-manag ement-systems). I'll make a new blog entry with a summary of this recent discussion, as far as it has real content for other readers. How about that? Cheers, Erik - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Erik M. Hartman President CM Professionals +31 418 680 720 president@... Are you a CM Pro? Join www.cmprofessionals.org! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > Van: cms-bounces@... > [mailto:cms-bounces@...] Namens Peter Dresslar > Verzonden: dinsdag 31 oktober 2006 22:47 > CC: cms@... > Onderwerp: Re: [CMS] Website CMS questions > > I'm not sure we'll actually have a winner to this debate, > since it goes back to a time when there was still Star Trek > and it was still Good. > > -Peter > > Austin, Darrel wrote: > >> So the incentive to make the product easy to use and require as > >> little support as is possible is built-in. Can you say the > same thing > >> for a model based on OpenSource (i.e. no licensing costs)? > I would be > >> most interested in hearing about it! (really!) > >> > > > > Of course you can. Like I said, this can be spun in any direction. > > > > For the OS spin: > > > > OS software is a product of developers. Developers who spend time > > working on the product not for monetary gain, but for > pride. They take > > pride in their craft and strive to produce good, solid, usable > > products not just to please any specific customer, but to > please themselves. > > > > Of course, the more practical spin is the exact same one you used: > > > > OS developers don't want to spend time supporting their product > > anymore than commercial vendors do. As such, they want to write a > > good, solid application to reduce the amount of time > supporting end users. > > > > > >>> In the end, make a good product. That's all that matters. > >>> > >> But that statement ignores the underlying problem: does the model > >> promote making a "good product". > >> > > > > I'm not hear to argue whether or not OS is a viable > business model. It > > clearly is. Just as commercial software sales appears to be > a viable > > business model. To write one or the other off is just silly. > > > > > >> Indeed... and yet your initial comment was: > >> > The only difference between OS and Commercial CMS > products is that > >> you > pay more for one up front. ;o) > >> > > > > Smilie = typically meant to imply a statement was said partially in > > jest/toungue in cheek/not meant to instigate an all out debate. > > (though the debate is enjoyable and seems to be fairly civil thus > > far... ;o) > > > > -Darrel > > > > _______________________________________________ > > cms mailing list > > cms@... > > Subscription controls: > > http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms > > Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], > > [contentmanagers], [cmpros] > > http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html > > http://www.cms-lists.org > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > cms mailing list > cms@... > Subscription controls: > http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms > Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], > [contentmanagers], [cmpros] > http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html > http://www.cms-lists.org > _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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Re: Website CMS questions
by Robert Koberg
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Erik Hartman wrote:
> Peter, > > I like your conclusion. And yes, the discussion here is getting a bit > personal and 'religious'. >>From the past I know that most list members don't like that. Better take > your personal comments off list, please. > > In July this year there was a similar discussion that I tried to > summarize at our CM Pros Benelux blog > (http://cmprosbenelux.org/2006/07/22/open-vs-closed-source-content-manag > ement-systems). This is wrong: "In my opinion the advantage of most OSS CMS-es is that they support open standards. Thus they are more easy to integrate with other systems, whether OSS or proprietary." Open standards (input and/or output) have nothing to do with proprietary systems or OSS. And really there are many different kinds of OSS licenses. So really, you probably need a lawyer to to sign off on the license terms to make sure you are within the law. -Rob http://livestoryboard.com Pricing info: http://livestoryboard.com/CMS-FAQ/CMS-pricing.html > > I'll make a new blog entry with a summary of this recent discussion, as > far as it has real content for other readers. How about that? > > Cheers, > > Erik _______________________________________________ cms mailing list cms@... Subscription controls: http://lists.cms-forum.org/mailman/listinfo/cms Netiquette FAQ and related CMS lists - [cms-forum], [cms-pr], [contentmanagers], [cmpros] http://www.cmsreview.com/NetiquetteFAQ.html http://www.cms-lists.org |
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