We all know content management systems (CMS) can be beneficial for most websites. However, they do come with five hidden costs.
Many think of a content management system as a magic bullet that solves all of their content woes. Unfortunately the cost of a CMS is greater than its price tag. Before making a decision about whether to adopt a CMS, or indeed which CMS to choose, you first need to be aware of the hidden costs. These include:
- The cost of training
- The cost to quality
- The cost to functionality
- The cost of redundancy and flexibility
- The cost of commitment
It is important that you understand the impact of each beginning with the cost of training.
The cost of training
Probably the most obvious hidden cost is that of training. No matter how well designed the application or how good the documentation, some level of training is normally required. In my experience training is particularly important with free open source systems. These tend to have less documentation and the interface is often designed by programmers rather than user experience experts. The result is a great learning curve.
The more content production is delegated, the more people it is necessary to train. Whether this is done through onsite training or video tutorials it is still a considerable cost.
Although training maybe an obvious expense it is not without surprises. Organisations often fail to consider that training has an ongoing cost. The more people using a system the higher the likelihood somebody will need to be replaced. This carries with it a cost in both time and money.
This ongoing cost is not limited to training new CMS users. Existing content provider also require refresher courses if they are not using the CMS regularly. I have often provided training for an organisation only to receive a call six months later because people have forgotten how to login. This is because they used the system so infrequently.
Unfortunately the price of having a lot of people editing your site is the cost of increased training. However, that is not the only cost that grows with numbers. So does the cost to quality.
The cost to quality
In some ways, what a CMS gives with one hand it takes away with the other. Quality and control are classic examples of this. Enterprise level content management systems have complex workflow tools that prevent new content from going live until it has been checked and double checked. This is designed specifically to ensure the quality of content being posted online.
The problem with this is two fold. First, this kind of functionality is only normally found in more expensive systems. Second, few organisations implement this kind of quality control because it creates a bottleneck in the approval process. This bottleneck is precisely the kind of problem a CMS was supposed to solve.
I think this highlights a substantial problem with content management systems. They are often implemented in the hope they will solve what is an organizational rather than technical problem. Unfortunately technology cannot solve everything.
At one extreme you can open up your CMS to allow anybody to post to your site. This will lead to a decline in the quality of your content. On the other you can limit access and create a bottleneck where only one or two individuals can make content live. The technology can offer you lots of options along that sliding scale. What you need to do is find a happy medium.
Of course, at least a CMS offers this control. That is more than an HTML driven website can. However, a non CMS driven site does allow more flexibility when it comes to functionality.
The cost to functionality
When you have a website that is not built on a CMS the possibilities are endless. Because you have complete control over your code, it is possible to build any additional functionality you require. However, once you commit to a content management system things become more complex.
Although it is possible to build additional functionality that sits alongside your CMS there can be problems with integration. For example, if your CMS does not have a forum and you wish to add one, you may have to ask users to login twice. Once for the site and once for the forum. Equally you may find it hard to tie your CMS in with other systems that you later purchase.
Some content management systems provide plugins to add additional functionality. However, often you are forced to either compromise or wait until the next release of the CMS and hope it supports your requirements.
Although you may find yourself frustrated by a lack of functionality, it is equally possible to be frustrated by too much.
The cost of redundancy and complexity
Unless you have a bespoke content management system, developed to your exact requirements it will probably contain functionality you do not need. That is because off the shelf solutions are designed to appeal to a wide audience.
Not only does this mean you pay for unwanted functionality, it also adds complexity to the user interface. The more functionality, the more complexity, the more to learn.
It is a problem that applications such as Microsoft Word have suffered from for years. Word is very powerful and provides an enormous range of features. The problem is that the majority of people only use a fraction of what is available. The result is that most pay for functionality they do not use, and struggle to learn what is a complex application. This is the problem many content management systems are facing.
The reason people have not stopped using Word and move instead to something simpler, is that they are invested both financially and in time. This brings us to the final drawback of content management systems.
The cost of commitment
Content management systems demand a high level of commitment on many fronts. These include:
- The upfront financial investment in implementing the system
- The cost and time involved in training staff
- The substantial amount of data entered into the system
The third area can be particularly tricky. Once your content is in a content management system it is not always a simple matter to get it out.
With such an investment in both time and money it is important to make the right selection of system. Changing your mind later is expensive.
So am I suggesting you should avoid content management systems entirely? Not at all. The benefits they provide are real and cannot be ignored. However, I am saying that you should go into the process of selecting a content management system with your eyes wide open. A content management system is not a magic bullet that solves all your content woes. However, it can be a useful tool is selected carefully.
As a consultant who works with many clients to setup CMS’s I think this is an excellent article.
I do disagree with the points brought up in the “Cost of Functionality” though — “When you have a website that is not built on a CMS the possibilities are endless. ” — or when you choose to use an Open Source CMS like DotNetNuke (DNN) you will also have complete control over the code and all the benefits of a CMS.
In this case, the issues with integration that are brought up can often be entirely negated because a competent developer can modify the CMS to the extent necessary to fully support whatever integration is needed, whether it be a forum with single sign-on or systems that you later purchase.
Admittedly, this shifts the “cost” from being frustrated by feature limitation, to custom development cost, but at least the possibilities are wide open.
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[…] Another list: Costs of running a CMS By Jay Small - Posted 8:44 am 8/6/2008 No one told me this was Top 5 List Week. I spotted another useful list in Webland, this time, the five hidden costs of content management systems over at Vitamin. […]
Drupal baby! Free, open source, very flexible, well supported, awesome.
1. Training can be tricky and Drupal is notorious for the administrator learning curve. However, a good setup can be pretty simple for the end user. Also, whatever solution you choose (including custom) is going to require training.
2. Quality through workflows, etc can be achieved fairly easily and is very flexible in Drupal. I think this is where a CMS is better than a custom/HTML solution.
3. Adding functionality is Drupal’s strong point. The core system is highly flexible and Drupal has a superb module and hooking system that has been utilized to develop thousands of modules. This is well documented and fairly easy to do. Also, all of the code is right there for you to hack if you really want to.
4. Redundancy and complexity. You’re right about this one. Drupal has more functionality than is required for most installs - however a LOT of the functionality is modular and can be disabled/uninstalled. Also, in general the code quality and complexity of Drupal or another CMS is going to be better than a homegrown solution.
5. Commitment is indeed required - but the commitment is lower than a custom/HTML system! You will have to invest in learning Drupal (there are many experts, lots of documentation and a great community). But don’t worry about data lock-in, you data is right there in MySQL for you to take, twist and export.
CMS systems are extremely useful - don’t reinvent the wheel. The choice of CMS is indeed very important but for many cases I would strongly recommend Drupal.
The number 1 failure I keep running into with clients who have previously implemented a CMS solution is before choosing a CMS is failure to define their process. If your process isn’t defined, then a CMS implementation will fail in most aspects.
Invest in a CMS which doesn’t fit how the process, and expecting it fit an amoeba-like process is not going to work. Before choosing a CMS, choose a consultant who can evaluate, document, and align your process before you spend time and money implementing any CMS.
There are a gazillion CMS solutions today, many are completely flexible including code and content control, and their prices range from free to a gazillion dollars. Some are very good, most are terrible.
Never expect to simply buy an over the counter solution and it work for your process. It may be that a consultant recommends a custom solution.
As for features you don’t need… ‘need’ is an arguable concept, I would never recommend investing in a solution that does not offer expandability. If you do buy in to a CMS which can’t be extended for future growth, then you may end up having to spend more money to implement another CMS as your web project grows (and you do want it to grow, don’t you?)
Well, short summary was better expressed by Jeffrey Veen:
(http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000622.html).
“They are often implemented in the hope they will solve what is an organizational rather than technical problem.”
so true.
While I don’t disagree with anything in this article, it could equally have been called ‘the 5 hidden costs of running a bespoke development team’ and your same 5 costs would still apply:
1. The cost of training - “…some level of training is normally required…” to make websites by hand
2. The cost to quality - Website departments not wishing to be subject to the whims of the marketing dept “…have complex workflow tools that prevent new content from going live until it has been checked and double checked.”
3. The cost to functionality - “When you have a website that is not built on a CMS the possibilities are endless.” But as ALL functionality is now bespoke, you must still “…either compromise or wait until the next release ”
4. The cost of redundancy and complexity - Unless you have been growing developers in dark rooms since birth, “…developed to your exact requirements it will probably contain functionality you do not need.” and other features…
5. The cost of commitment - Hiring staff, or entering into support contracts with outside agencies.
Concrete5 is pretty sweet free CMS that I saw at oscon this year. I’ve only played a bit with it, but it seems like it would lower all these “costs’ you mention to almost zero. Super slick user-interface, quick installation, lots of plug-ins, etc.
Good article. Many people see a CMS as the answer to their solutions. Sometimes it is but sometimes just have static pages can be just a good if you have the right tools for editing those pages. Depends on the need.
One nickpic. I’m not sure opening up a CMS declines the quality. In fact sometimes it does the opposite. See Wikipedia for an obvious example. When you close access up you may get better quality or you may just get blandness. Depends on the culture of your organization.
@Al
I am moving away from Drupal for my simpler websites.
I plan to only use Drupal when higher end customizations are needed,and I can do it myself.
The lack of automatic module and code updates makes Drupal VERY timeconsuming.
[…] There’s an excellent article by Paul Boag over at Vitamin, entitled The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS. Content management systems can be a great way for site owners to manage their sites, but they do come with hidden costs as well. I know this from experience. […]
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Agree with Toby Stokes above.
This article is analogous to warning against buying a lawnmower to cut your lawn, because it is dangerous, loud and smelly. The alternative would be cutting your grass with a sickle or a scissors.
The “costs” mentioned have to be dealt with, whether or not you use a CMS (training content contributors to use a template in Dreamweaver, for example, will take a lot more effort than training them in the simple interface of a good CMS). But a CMS in most cases is a far better tool than the alternative.
I think you also need to mention security and package updates. Do you update immediately to plug any holes and risk the site breaking? Do you hang on and monitor feedback but leave the site vulnerable? Will new functionality be compatible with old code elements?
While I can agree with many of the points and the general philosophy of this post - I can’t agree entirely. Our clients have been using Umbraco and I am constantly amazed by how pleased they are with the learning curve and the usability. The backend is basically a tree view - something they are all familiar with thanks to Windows Explorer - and yet the CMS is very much a Platform with a Backend. Training has not been a problem for us and I can highly recommend the Umbraco CMS/Framework
I have to say, with the exception of #1 I fail to see where this list is coming from.
As you point out workflow is an invaluable tool and a must have for larger organizations, as with any media, naturally anything that is presented to the public must be approved. The workflow in our CMS is configurable, so make sure you have enough qualified admins. simple.
Our solution to functionality was to avoid OpenSource CMS. Our CMS provide have expert developers they have proven time and time again that anything can be built for our CMS. Sure there is a cost, but nobody is programming for free, in-house or not.
Don’t script on #1 and get the full potential out of your CMS.
Every good website takes time and commitment, right?
We are tickled pink with our Hot Banana CMS website. We got a few key people in our organization trained up and a bit of custom developement done early in the process and we have never looked back, I can’t image a medium/large organization keeping something so important, current and managable any other way.
All of this is highly contextual to the type of business you have, your website requirements and technical level of your team. We have seen both sides of the coin, clients who do really well and save a lot of money with CMS, and then others who get stuck with bad systems and poor code that can’t afford the revamp required. In general, as for most things, rely on a reputable consultant to determine your business objectives, in terms of your website requirements, before you make a decision. It will be money well spent. My advise to clients is be risk adverse, and give the organization some time to make the right choice.
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A good website should have the purpose of the site as the formost consideration during the design phase.
Similarly by extension, a CMS should also.
Clients who aren’t really sure what they are getting from their CMS are unable to articulate their exact needs proactively, and the onus is on the supplier to fully explain the intended function of the CMS, and its limitations, and get sign-off before proceeding.
We custom build our CMSs, and maybe it is this that forces us to nail down the CMS function spec before development to minimise uncertainties and unpleasant surprises!
I wonder if its fair to say that some clients shouldn’t be allowed a CMS! If they can’t resize an image, and they don’t know what a hyperlink is, then they are incapable of managing their own site, right? Better to send images and word docs to web guys and pay an hourly rate…
I have just stopped offering Drupal to clients and try to put them of using it as I was recently shown a CMS called MODx by one of our developers.
It is easier to use than Drupal from a clients point of view. Our developers love it because it cuts down on time when creating complex navigation etc. MODx has a smaller fan base than Durpal at the moment due to it being fairly new, however I can see this increasing and one day neing able to take on the likes of Drupal.
I insist on giving MODx a go from my experiances with it.
[…] I was recently reading the excellent Paul Boag article “The 5 Hidden Costs of Running a CMS” about the many pitfalls of Content Management Systems (CMS). We all know content management systems (CMS) can be beneficial for most websites. However, they do come with five hidden costs. […]
[…] There’s in interesting article over at vitamin by Paul Boag entitled The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS. Of course these costs must be allowed for in any serious CMS implementation strategy. Not much emphasis is given to the very real need for any publication content managed by a person or to be edited. Just like in the good old world of print. Just because the web allows us to publish instantly - it doesn’t mean it’s necessary a good idea to do so. There’s a good article about the need for editors over at ALA (I think I’ve mentioned before). […]
I LOVE MODx CMS, it’s a great tool that’s not too much and not too little when it comes to functionality. I’ve also really been wanting to try Expression Engine. I have found that almost all clients want a CMS, but (1). aren’t willing to pay for the added value they receive and (2). Expect it to do everything for them, with having no technical expertise. Granted, this is not every client - but when people who don’t know how to write copy or use simple tools are given a powerful tool like this, you see the Website deteriorate in quality very quickly. It’s a double edge sword. It’s viewed as a way to save money because you no longer have to pay for updates, but the key is having someone on the other end (of the client), in the org or business that is technical. It’s up to the business to enforce quality standards, which sadly is rare.
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Boy have you made content management systems into a straw man. The points mentioned all have enough validity to appear reasonable on the surface but on deeper consideration it looks like you are reaching. You’re absolutely right that a CMS is not a silver bullet, but for an organization that needs to publish a lot of content it’s pretty much the only solution.
I think the problems you raise are more the result of people who aren’t used to publicly sharing information entering a new field. These are really challenges related to learning the ins and outs of publishing than of content management systems.
Let’s look at your points one-by-one.
1. Cost of Training:
Sure training people to use a CMS is expensive but what’s the alternative? If you are going to publish on the web you will need to train people. Do you train them in HTML? Dreamweaver? emacs? Right.
You said, “The more content production is delegated, the more people it is necessary to train.†That’s it. Period. This cost has little to do with using a CMS. If you need content input from people you will need to train them all in something, even if it’s Word. Using or not using a CMS is almost a side issue here.
2. The cost to quality
You don’t need an “enterprise quality†CMS to introduce an editor into the workflow. Even a system as simple as Wordpress offers this capacity. As you rightly say, this is an organizational problem not a technical one. It is not a hidden cost but one inherent in any publishing. Yes putting editorial oversight into the workflow introduces a bottleneck.
Again, it has nothing to do with the use or non-use of a CMS. If you are going to have multiple people produce content for a website you will have quality control problems. If there is no editorial review then there will be uneven output. You will have the same problem with a photocopied church newsletter.
3. The cost to functionality
Sure you can have unlimited design control with HTML. You can have unlimited functionality control through custom programming. Talk about bottlenecks and added time and cost. Occasionally, custom functionality is a real issue. More often, the limits imposed by a reasonably flexible system are a blessing. Okay folks, this is what you can do so get on with it. And if you are going to use custom programming, many systems are open enough that you can add custom modules that will do what you need.
One real advantage of using an off the shelf system is that you aren’t throwing alpha quality software into the world the way that many custom systems do. A popular CMS will have lots of user testing and lots of sharp people looking at security. And making people register multiple times for different sections of a site can be very off putting an non-professional looking.
4. The cost of redundancy and flexibility
I’ll grant you that there is a tradeoff here, as there is with Word. But what’s the world’s most used word processing program? It’s the one with the most features. With many systems the functionality that the content provider actually sees can be greatly limited. Yes, this takes set up for the administrator but does allow for a simple end user interface. And using a modular system can minimize this.
5. The cost of commitment
And how will not using a CMS lower these costs? There is an inherent cost to web publishing. On the whole a CMS lowers that cost because you don’t have to train every content provider to code HTML or RoR or whatever. Many organizations don’t take this into consideration, true. But the same is true of every IT department I’ve ever seen. Senior management doesn’t budget for training., and employees are chronically undertrained. A CMS is just another software program that you can add to the list.
Absolutely it’s vital to do your homework and choose the best CMS fit you can. This isn’t a hidden cost though. It’s simple due diligence.
Yes, you need to factor in reusability of content and how to retrieve it from the CMS and how to back it up. You will have this problem with any publishing system. Using a database at least puts the date in one place instead of every person in the organization storing their content on their own computers.
In my day job I’m a web developer, I have a client who has just called me to ask why their website has disappeared. Normally I host the clients website, but this particular client had their own in place so I used that - I installed a CMS for them and re-themed it because they said they wanted to update the site themselves.
So fast forward to now and I get a call asking me what’s happened, I take a look at their URL and it’s showing the ISP’s holding page. So I ask them when their hosting account was due for renewal - they didn’t know. They go away and find out, it expired in December last year (it’s now August). I took a look in waybackmachine and see that the last snapshot was in September last year and it was almost exactly as I had left it when I set it up for them.
I took a lot of care and attention setting the site up and running through how to use the admin interface and they never bothered to use it.
I have / had another client who I set up in the same way - he managed to delete the CSS records and the site collapsed around his ears.
I think content management systems are great, but for your sanities sake don’t let your clients anywhere near them.
I’m now setting up sites for clients using WordPress and then disabling all the commenting functions so it looks like a website and not a blog - the admin interface is straight forward and so far (touches wood) the clients seem to be getting the hang of it.
Great article I whole heartedly agree.
[…] Think Vitamin recently published a solid article that outlines the “five hidden costs” of running a CMS. These hidden costs are a function of your business model, your website requirements, and technical level of your team. At Viewstream, we have seen both sides of the coin, clients who do really well and save a lot of money with CMS, and then others who get stuck with bad systems and poor code that require complete redevelopment. […]
Excellent article. Many good points for discussion.
I’ll make an analogy to graphic design… back in the paste-up days, graphic design was a specialty due in great part to the need for a high level of both artistic and technical skill. Enter “desktop publishing,†and all of a sudden everyone can be a “designer.†WordArt, anyone?
A CMS can allow the illusion that anyone in an organization can publish content on the web; bypassing writers, editors, designers, etc. A quick look at 95% of websites will dispel that notion. There is no CMS that can replace professional editors or designers—there’s usually a very good reason to set up a bottleneck for content. The trick is, of course, to have the right people in the bottleneck. As Paul mentions, a technical solution can’t solve an organizational problem. Gadgets don’t solve problems, people do.
My personal experience is limited to WordPress and Expression Engine, and I have mixed feelings about them both. I’ve found it’s rarely cost-effective for a small business or organization to go with one of those solutions. The success or failure of a CMS is totally dependent upon the level of technical expertise and interest on the part of the people who will be contributing to the site. The guy who curses out loud at Word will have no better luck with a CMS.
My clients are usually happier to simply hire me on an ongoing basis to do their updates—they really don’t want to learn a new program, they just want to send me an email and let me take care of it. I’m careful to evaluate the client’s technological comfort level before recommending anything other than a professionally-managed HTML site. I never give them the option of doing program updates or structural changes themselves. I may sound like a control freak, but there’s no advantage to the client in enabling them to break their own site!
Thanks for sharing this wonderful post. The information you have got here is so insightful and informative. I am sure more people would love to read this. More Power Paul!
While agreeing most on Paul’s post on point “Cost of Functionality†I am more line with Chris Busse’s comment above. I do not think all CMS systems makes harder to extend functionality it really depends on platform and architecture. If you take out of the box CMS like Joomla or SharePoint (even MOSS) it is difficult on expensive to extend but there are many CM Frameworks that are really designed for extendibility and integration. When choosing a CMS one should really think this aspect as well. Is it important to think integration or should it be just a brochure site with some basic functionality?
Many great Open Source CM Frameworks were already mentioned on previous comments like dotNetNuke, Drupal, MODx but there are also commercial ones that aren’t out of the box CMS like Sitecore CMS. Also, MVC platforms alike Django, Rails and ASP.MVC are breeding out CMS’s that are natively extendable thanks to MVC model.
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[…] The 5 hidden costs of running a CMSWe all know content management systems (CMS) can be beneficial for most websites. However, they do come with five hidden costs […]
Having recently begun work in an organisation that uses a proprietary CMS, this is a subject very close to my heart. In general, I think most of the failings of CMS software boils down to the level of complexity. Ideally, a CMS would do just that: manage content. It wouldn’t have search functionality, ‘clever’ WYSIWYG interfaces, etc. that just serve to bloat the product and reduce overall quality.
Most websites, I believe, are very narrow in scope, including what subset of ‘content’ actually needs to be managed by the masses. A fairly strict small subset of HTML - headings, paragraphs, lists, possibly tables - is probably sufficient for most organisations’ needs. Yet the CMS product we use overcomplicates everything enormously.
I was expecting, under “The cost to quality”, to see a mention of problems relating to final markup and design. The CMS we use does not produce valid XHTML and makes valid HTML almost impossible to achieve. It presents an oh-so clever WYSIWYG interface, trying to convince end-authors that that’s the way the web works - dangerous.
The product is obviously badly programmed, and only works in IE. Everything about it smacks of windows-centric programmers who do not have a solid grasp of established good practises - lots of bugs, inconsistent behaviour, very confusing terminology, etc. Moreover, support is only available once an expensive training course has been taken, and this is on an individual basis.
I’m concerned that we’re now completely locked into this thing, because getting at the raw content is pretty difficult - for a reason, I’m sure.
Teamness and CMS costs…
Paul Boag writes about The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS. I found the article interesting and I think it’s challenging to see how these costs relate to Teamness….
I would have to agree with Paul on all but one item. I use Expression Engine for nearly all my sites and I haven’t had to give up any functionality of my sites. I code them in TextMate and slowly tear them down in EE. I make all my stylesheets, images and javascript external keeping everything clean. Thank goodness for Paul Boag.
[…] In determining the ROI of a CMS solution, there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. There are the benefits - increased organizational efficiency being the major one for most users. The ability to easily keep their web presence up-to-date is invaluable to many of our clients. But there are also costs. I recently found this great article by Vitamin entitled: The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS system. […]
Somewhere in this discussion the word “content”–as in “content management system”–seems to have been lost. There’s potentially a HUGE cost in converting or migrating legacy content. Add to that the cost in analyzing what content is included and what isn’t, who manages the content (writes it, edits it, checks its validity, currency, etc.), and you’ve got other hidden costs not mentioned by anyone so far. See http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/migrating-legacy-content/
Only having been designing enterprise-ish level apps for about 2 years now I have learned a lot about building custom CMS’ for clients who want autonomy in managing their websites. I have learned that there are both upsides and downsides to this approach:
The Upsides
You can bill more up-front rather than relying on month to month revenue that may be interrupted for some reasons
There aren’t as many calls at 1am to fix punctuation
Responsibility for the look and feel, easily the most subjective part of a website, is passed to the client. No more having to explain why white-space is a good thing and script fonts are bad
The Downsides
Often there is one or many people in an organization that is completely computer illiterate and will often blame the CMS for their own incompetency
If something breaks, it’s harder to fix, especially if you are using open source software.
If the client murders the look and feel of the site, you’re not going to want to put that on your porftolio
The client may accuse you of creating a system only you know how to use (this happened to me recently)
I build my CMS’ from scratch in Rails and use TinyMCE as the main text-editor and it works pretty well. You can remove whatever buttons you want as to not overcomplicate things, and it allows you do build in some neat functionality like drag-and-dropping of pictures.
It’s close enough to Word that most people can create and edit pages well enough. For a couple of my clients it has been a god-send, especially with the particularly picky ones. For others it has been a nightmare because they could never get the hang of the system.
It’s a mixed bag, but I think the most important thing is to have a very detailed contract outlining where responsibility falls and what’s expected of both sides. This will prevent any future nightmares that may crop up.
One could easily mention the ‘5 hidden benefits of running a CMS’ if you simply pick the 5 existing topics:
1. The cost of training without a CMS: train your content managers in xhtml/css, good luck.
2. The cost to quality without a CMS: corporate image will tumble due to contain broken links, inconsistencies, etc.
3. The cost to functionality without a CMS: no previews, no workflow, no… you get the idea.
4. The cost of redundancy and flexibility without a CMS: do I even need to explain?
5. The cost of commitment without a CMS: would any serious Marketing Manager consider using no CMS for his site? And do authors like Notepad + WSFTP for content management?
Build a solid business case and management and end-users will love a CMS.
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It seems like most of the comments here and the article, assume that everyone is trying to manage content on an enterprise scale. I think there are many site owners who only want to manage a few small sections of their site and don’t want the complexity of workflows, admin rules or investments in server technology. When you look at the market that wants minimal functionality and weigh the cost of these 5 issues, it’s not worth it.
What’s especially important is to pick a CMS that is well-supported. Make sure the developers are active, but even more importantly, especially for open-source solutions, choose one with a big community around it. This is why I chose WordPress; the out-of-the-box features do not excel nor even reach CMS levels, but there’s so much you can do with others’ plugins that I’ve gone much further than I would with Drupal, with my limited programming skills.
Hi brandonrichards,
I saw you meaned the CMS, you’re developing that now?
Because I’m doing the same thing, and I need some help about it!
Another hidden cost with CMS is around scalability and deployment, with standard (static) sites you will mostly work offline, then deploy an update via FTP SSH or whatever. With a CMS system things get a little trickier; as your website grows, not only do you need to deal with migrating databases, but there’s also the added risk of massive data loss at each new deployment or update. On that note the necessity to make regular backups of your database becomes paramount when developing with a CMS, after all once the client begins entering data into the database, it’s their database. All in all a much riskier (but worthwhile) choice for a developer - nice article Paul :)
[…] I often listen to the Boagworld podcast by Paul Boag of Headscape; the current episode has a feature, which is essentially an extract from his forthcoming book in which he talks about content mangement systems and how there are too many of them. His post has a lot fo really good points about what to look for in a system and the issues that come along with them, such as support; his post on Vitamin shows the costs of a CMS, most of which aren’t strictly finiancial. […]
[…] Vitamin Features » The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS (tags: web webdev cms) […]
[…] Vitamin Features » The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS - […]
Excellent article. I have a love/hate relationship with content management systems. I’ve used and implemented free open source and costly closed source systems and my favorite by far has been a cheaper solution that manages your content and just gets out of the way of everything else.
All of these costs are very real and you’ll run into each one along the way. The greatest non-monetary cost is in selecting the right system. It can take several months to narrow down your choices and select a CMS but it is worth it in the end. Selecting the wrong CMS will have a huge impact on you.
Somewhere in this discussion the word “contentâ€â€“as in “content management systemâ€â€“seems to have been lost. There’s potentially a HUGE cost in converting or migrating legacy content. Add to that the cost in analyzing what content is included and what isn’t, who manages the content (writes it, edits it, checks its validity, currency, etc.), and you’ve got other hidden costs not mentioned by anyone so far.
[…] Vitamin Features » The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS - […]
Thanks for the information on the hidden costs………very informative
Hey guys. Thank you for this discussion, it really made me think…
I am having troubles deciding if I should use a CMS for a new website contract I received or stick with DW and php/css.
The organization that contracted me needs a pretty simple but dynamic website with picture galleries, a possibility to give a money donation via credit card/paypal, and weekly updated news section.
For now, there is only one person in that organization and even when it grows to a few people, there won’t be any techies or web designers. However, they want to update their site themselves, as I will not be able to help them after the site is launched.
I have never worked with a CMS before and was advised by a friend to use MODx, as it would cut my development time in half.
Is the MODx CMS solution suitable for me in this case, as I would not have to program myself the administration of the website, or is it a waste of time and I should stick with regular php/html programming?
Thanks!
Very good article.
I think the biggest problem is, as web developers we all are aware of these costs, but we don’t always make them clear to the client.
Jan - I love Modx. I even use it when developing a static site.
Say I have to change something in the header. I just make the change in the template - click Export Static HTML and all my pages have the new header.
Great sophisticated article and I agree with you in all points. That´s something economists know, but developers maybe do not. So it´s important to publish this. Using typo3 I am happy, because it´s really simple and powerful.
This article is a must read for all webmasters who use CMS
I believe our new CMS overcomes all but ‘Functionality’ as an issue here. We’ve deliberately limited the functionality to create a simple intuitive tool for creating websites for SMEs, charities, schools etc.
PagePlay is sold to clients on a rental basis, so we continually update and develop it removing the opportunity costs associated with a one-off development.
Style functions are fully tied down so the clients enter their content semantically, with all design and style being set at the initial ‘design stage’ of the project - as it should be.
We can add any additional bespoke functionality as required by the client - and integrate seamlessly with PagePlay.
[…] The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS […]
[…] So you think you need a CMS? You’ve been told it can save costs because you don’t have to pay a company to publish content. Here is a great articles by Paul Boag about the hidden costs associated with a Content Management System. That said, the ultimate question is: How frequently do you plan on publishing new content? […]