Re: What/why is the CMS failure rate? (WAS: RE: ask for he lp)

I think the major problem with CMSes is not so much the software but the
attitude people have about the software. A CMS will not solve all your Web
problems. It is merely a platform for producing a Web site. For the site to
be high quality and truly dynamic, a company or organization needs to
embrace the product and learn to use it. I think companies and organizations
want a system that is so easy that they can just drop it in and think it
should produce this great Web site. Or they feel they will find the
"perfect" CMS with only the things they "need". Unfortunately, that is not
how a CMS works. If a CMS could fulfill everyone's needs, it would be
bloatware. A CMS should be easy for the content editor/end user, but not
necessarily for the people implementing it. A serious enterprise system
takes knowledge and project management. You need people to oversee
architecture, needs analysis, design and training along with learning the
technical aspects of the system so it can be customized. This can be done
through the organization or by using a consultant.

Developers create their own CMSes because they feel that their needs are not
being met with other CMSes. Instead of that attitude, I think what
developers need to do is invest in an already established, basic Content
Management Framework and build modules to customize the CMS to fit their
company's needs. A good CMF will allow a group to accomplish the building of
modules relatively easily. In other words, to be successful the system needs
to be scalable. No CMS will be what you and your organization need right out
of the box. You will always need to customize it to fit your unique needs
and situation. I have converted many customers to my CMS of choice, TYPO3
(http://www.typo3.com/), over the last two years and have learned a lot
about people and the technology. I think the reason why the software works
(at least in my case) is that it has an easy way to make extensions via the
extension manager. You have the basic core system and each module can easily
be added or removed. I have found that I have had to use that system quite
extensively to customize the software to fit my customer's needs (even
interfacing with legacy Web applications). Since there are so many CMSes out
there already, I think it would be best to support them (not all just some)
so that they can get better, and the best way for that to happen is for the
software to gain a large following from a community of developers (ex.
http://typo3.org/1477.0.html). At least that is what I have noticed from my
experience. I hate to see CMSes get a bad reputation because of poor
implementation strategy.

-- Michelle


> From: "Austin, Darrel" <[email protected]>
> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:23:09 -0600
> To: cms-list-/[email protected]
> Subject: What/why is the CMS failure rate? (WAS: RE: [cms-list] ask for he lp)
> 
>> CMS that encompasses all of these elements - they complain that the
>> tool set is overly complex, needs significant customization, and
>> usually does not deliver as expected - leading to the high rate of
>> CMS failure - forcing the customer to homegrow CMS components on top
>> of the existing 'end-to-end' system.
> 
> Graham triggered some question I'd like to pose:
> 
> 1) How high is the actual CMS failure rate?
> 
> 2) If it is high, why?
> 
> 3) Why are there still so many bad (or incorrectly marketed)
>    CMS products out there?
> 
> I got my hands dirty with CMSes these past two years. I'm certainly not an
> expert, but I haven't been too overly impressed with the CMSes I've had to
> use over the past two years or so...
> 
> - Worked with a client using Autonomy. It was sold to the client as a
> CMS/portal when it very clearly wasn't. We did find it a fine search engine
> (though a bit clumsy) and instead had to outsource a hosted CMS product to
> handle the actual CMS
> 
> - The hosted product was far from intuitive, but semi-usable after some
> training.
> 
> - At my current gig, I (as part of a team) spent several months
> researching/analyzing products and finally chose Web500. While a good
> product, it was sold to us as something it wasn't. In a matter of weeks we
> scrapped it. It was a failed CMS product for us.
> 
> - Feeling defeated, suckered, and stupid for buying something that, in
> hindsight, just plain didn't work, I attended a local internet conference a
> few weeks later. On the schedule was a CMS session hosted by two CMS experts
> from a highly reputable State University Business School. I thought I might
> learn something. Turns out that they had a mirror story to mine. They spent
> months researching products, finally hiring a vendor to custom build a
> product only to find that two weeks after launch that the product was awful
> and was in no way going to meet their needs. This brought up comments from
> the audience and there were, again, similiar stories.
> 
> While I obviously have a very small amount of exposure to the CMS products
> out there, my exposure has been pretty consistently bad. And it sounds like
> this isn't uncommon based on some recent comments in here.
> 
> So, I just thought I'd toss out the open ended 'why?' question to see what
> comes up. Are CMS vendors simply selling their products to the wrong
> clients? Are they not trully 'getting' what clients really need? Are clients
> not trully understanding what they need? Are CMS consultants all scam
> artists? Are the wrong people buying the products? Does everyone get to
> leave early from work on NYE except for me?
> 
> -Darrel
> 
> --
> http://cms-list.org/
> please trim your posts.
> 
> 

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