Aug 20 2007
The Right Tool
A Content Management System (CMS) is a tool to help you to manage (create, edit, organize) content of a website. You can build your own or use one of the thousands of systems available pre-built; some open source [free]…some proprietary [$$$].
One thing for sure, there is no one CMS that has it all…it’s always a matter of finding the right tool to do the job at hand. A small business brochureware website has different requirements then an enterprise portal–that’s obvious. However, granularity of choice is much finer.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
A good development team should be well-versed with a number of tools [CMS] used to build websites. An excellent resource for exploring and comparing Content Management Systems is CMS Matrix:
They currently have 789 systems to study and compare. CMS Matrix is only a starting point to find the right CMS tool. You’ll still need to do your due diligence with research and demoing products. You MUST demo any products being considered…it’s a requirement for so many reasons.
Hi Rich,
I’m currently developing my own CMS, csharpBB. It will be more of a community engine, where you can setup forums, blogs, articles, etc. It is based on modules so you can extend each module as you wish, and build off the base functionality that each ‘module’ has.
http://www.csharpbb.com should be live in the months to come!
Hi Salman,
Thanks for stopping by. I’ve been involved with building custom CMS’s with both classic ASP and later ASP.NET. A CMS in its simplest form is relatively easy to build, especially with ASP.NET 2.0+; however building a full featured system with workflow, content locking, a good template system, a good WYSIWYG, flexible navigation, etc. takes a lot of development effort, as I’m sure you know.
Do you plan to take the Open Source route and encourage open community development? This is one way to build your system with help, if you can peak interest and get buy-in. There are not that many Open Source CMS projects base upon ASP.NET (C#). I’d like to see a good one. I’m looking forward to seeing your system. I wish you the best of luck with your development. Keep us posted.