greg smart

At no point in the lifespan of Pleth, LLC have I found an issue more resistant to a solution than that of Content Management System(s) (CMS). At Pleth, we are a web design and managed hosting solution provider. In none of our sales pitch nor our site content will you find references to CMS solutions. This is because traditionally, in my opinion, we have fallen flat when it comes to the implementing a solution that really works for both ourselves and our clients. As I write this article I find myself, once again, searching for a solution to this puzzling problem.

In all honesty this is an issue that has never been at the forefront of our focus as a development company. Our business plan has always revolved around building attractive and accessible sites, then hosting those sites while providing content updates manually. Along with site hosting, it has been at the core of our plan to create a residual revenue stream. For the most part, this has worked. Some of the difficulty we have experienced with CMS implementation is that conceptually it is the antithesis of our business model. It alienates us from a significant revenue stream and to date CMS use has been the greatest source of discontent from our customer base.

I would say about 10 per cent of our client base wants, expects, CMS control of their site content. This is particularly true of many of our bigger accounts and as we find we are attracting a customer base comprised of increasingly larger companies it is becoming an ever more critical issue to our continued growth.

To date we have utilized a couple of different solutions, like Chris Leed’s content seed, Isaac McGowan’s phpEventCalendar and Interspire’s Webedit. Although each solution offers a unique approach to how the content is updated, written, and stored, each has limitations that have proven significant enough to deter further broad deployment. So, the seemingly endless search for a CMS continues and as always is proving frustrating.

Requirements, Candidates and Hope?

What we are searching for is a CMS that first and foremost possesses a User Interface (UI) which is easy for our customers to use and generates clean code that is consistent with existing CSS scheme(s). Although I am skeptical that these requirement can be met any time soon I have found a promising prospect in Windows Live Writer. Which, surprisingly enough, is available as a free download from Microsoft. From my initial assessment it has proven easy to install, relatively easy to configure, and a snap to use. At this point I would say it has any web UI beat. I am also hopeful as it appears to write somewhat clean code. The only real downside, that I have noted, is that it appears to provide the end user with the ability to create code laced with font, weight, color, and border tags. I am not even sure how they are expected to follow an existing CSS scheme with this software. Although I realize that this is not necessarily a deal killer it is disheartening since I would prefer a CMS that divorces the end user from this type of format control. The only tool that I have seen which truly addresses this issue is the WYMeditor project which is still early in its development. Unless something else comes along, I would venture to say that Windows Live Writer will be the tool that we rely on for our end user UI needs down the road.

On the back end our needs revolve around ease of skinning, security, long-term manageability (documentation and community support) and the ability to move our legacy CMS customers smoothly into the new system. All in all this is a very tall order that, after almost 4 years, has yet to be fulfilled.

Our current CMS candidate is Deamon’s FarCry project. This is a ColdFusion MX based, open source project that requires a single application install and allows for centralized management of multiple sites. Although I have yet to get my hands on it, I have been informed that it promises to meet all of the back end requirements as outlined above. I am also hopeful that the it may be possible to integrate WYMeditor into a web-based UI at a later date.

Over the next few months our plan is to begin evaluating FarCry as Pleth’s CMS of choice. It is my intention to document this process here.

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This is my first attempt at blogging. I am still trying to install some of the WordPress modules and get my skin just right (modified from Style Shout’s Envision template). So far it seems to render consistently in all major browsers except Firefox on my Xandros (Linux) machine.

My first attempt at installing and skinning blog software failed miserably. I installed BlogCFC by Raymond Camden but could not wrap my head around the ColdFusion code to get the site skinned, at all. I do have to say that the Blog CFC install process was fast, easy and fairly well documented. Past that point I quickly became lost and within a couple days abandoned it. After that failure I decided to go with this, more familiar, PHP solution. All in all I think it is turning out pretty well.

Short-term, the purpose of this blog is to assist me with evaluating the tools we are need internally at Pleth to develop an adequate Content Management System (CMS). In addition to familiarization with server side tools, I am looking forward to getting to know Windows Live Writer. From what I am hearing this will probably become the tool of choice to use for customer site updating. I will have to say I have been disappointed to find out that there is not a Mac version of the software, which I use outside the office.

Long-term, this is a component of our broader SEO strategy at Pleth. We have had a lot of success with our work over the previous year (for ourselves and our customers) and would like to see that expand with these blogs.

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