[thelist] Do I need a CMS

[Steve Lewis]

Hershel Robinson wrote:

> I am building a site now with an Articles section.  This Articles section
I presume this will be a permanent article archive, given the volume of
previous content you will be importing.

> My question is what do people think of my writing a simple CGI Perl script
> (and an Access database) to handle producing (in real time) category,
> sub-category and actual article pages?  I'll just keep pointers in the
That sounds like a fine idea.  You could conceivably use a relational
database like MS Access and three tables to put this together.  The
advantage is that this simplifies the generation of updated category and
subcategory specific article browse pages significantly.

You will probably want an number of extra data fields, such as
"Where/When was this published", "When was this posted to the site",
"What extra keywords should be associated with this article" which may
or may not be visible/obvious to site visitors but will help the author
when managing the archive.  Also consider the value of an internal-only
search scheme to allow the author to search for articles that mention a
specific topic.

Of course you will probably want to record article titles and abstracts
for display in these dynamic category and subcategory pages as well.

One feature, which may or may not seem obvious but, which will multiply
the utility of this article publishing solution is a "published
/unpublished" switch: A simple radio button setting for each article
which allows content to be explicitly "turned on" at the click of a
button, but explicitly "turned back off" just as easily.  You can easily
imagine a more complex solution than this simple binary switch, but
don't waste your time getting too fancy if the extra functionality won't
be used.

Good Questions to ask early:
Will an article appear in more than one category?
Should I build this tool to support a fixed depth of categories, or an
arbitrary depth of categories?
Do you have a fixed sort order for articles and categories (newest
before oldest), or do you need to allow the webmaster a way to easily
customize the order of appearance?

> HTML look before and after the article.  Does anyone think I need something
> more sophisticated?
Don't choose a Bently* if you need a car to fetch groceries from the
market down the road.

I don't think you categorically need "a CMS" you need a specific type of
CMS -- the feature sets of various content mgmt systems out there vary
significantly, and some lack in features that would be useful in this
environment while many will have far too much complexity.  Some
CMS-features are clearly helpful in this case.  The question that I
leave unanswered is 'how much CMS do I need.' The decision you need to
make about the necessity and complexity of a CMS solution depends
ultimately on careful consideration of the client's needs.

It sounds to me like the author needs some aspects of a CMS, but may not
want or need the complexity that is inherant in a more robust CMS
environment.  In particular I see absolutely no workflow considerations
in your analysis.  That will cost time and energy to develop if you
write your own, and it will inflate the cost of a shrinkwrapped
solution; in addition it will get in the way of publishing articles in
an environment where there is only one author/ editor/ publisher.

I am hesitant to recommend an expensive silver bullet to slay your
Jabberwocky**, but it is clearly important to look around at the CMS
solutions out there and consider their feature sets when scoping this
project so you can get a reasonable idea of what you may or may not want
to offer, and what your client will and will not need.

* an expensive automobile.
** a mythical beast, used metaphoricaly here for a problem or challenge
with website content management

--Steve