As mentioned in The Conundrum of CMS our search for an adequate CMS has followed a long and bumpy path. I was hopeful when Scott, our ColdFusion programmer, pointed me toward the FarCry CMS. Although it looked promising the learning curve proved too great a hurdle. Although this may be a solid CMS I simply couldn’t see deploying it for our customer base. So, once again, we reluctantly started the CMS wild goose chase again.
What is Needed?
Having run this gauntlet before I have a pretty clear idea of what an acceptable CMS ought to entail:
- It must be user friendly against an audience with a very limited skill set. Our customers are not in the web business and don’t have the time or patience to learn a CMS with a complex set of processes.
- The client updates must be as divorced from the site shell as much as possible but also allow for updating of areas other than the primary content area.
- The WYSIWYG must produce solid, standards compliant code. I could create a laundry list of why this is important, but one of the more practical ones is due to the fact that as our sites become increasingly standards compliant (i.e. table-less) they also become more susceptible to a WYSIWYG generating poorly structured code. Throw in an unclosed div tag and the whole design goes to hell.
- It must support multiple users per site with a site admin designated to control CMS access
- It must be well documented, well supported and flexible
That’s all, pretty simple huh (sarcasm)?
A Ray of Hope? Again…
Last week I ran across MODx, CMS and PHP application framework. At first glance this is a complex piece of software, the admin UI actually has a lot in common with the FarCry system. Once I dove in I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. This appears to be a relatively mature system that has a lot of nice features. Over the course of a week I worked my way through most of the admin panel and have been pleased with what I have found. So pleased in fact that I have deployed it in 3 instances in which I was desperate to replace our current CMS with a solution.
The short-term reviews have been good. The end users have been utilizing the software with a minimum of instruction. I would estimate that they have updated their site content more in the last week than they have in the last 6 months. This has also occurred without having to go in and “fix” the site coding on our side.
Best I can tell this is truly a standards compliant CMS, meets all of the criteria outlined above and warrants a closer look by all of our staff.
