Web Design and CMS – A Good Match, But When?

To use a CMS for your  Web   Design  could be a good idea. There are situations in which you rather would not use one. Here are some advantages and disadvantages.

You’d better not choose a CMS for your web site if:

The look-and-feel needs to be completely unique. The layout of a CMS is highly recognizable, but also limited by the standard boxes and format that you can choose from. You are free too change colors, switch and move the layout, but a new trendy design will normally not fit into the CMS options.

Another reason why you should not directly use a CMS is when you are just starting with Web Sites and maintenance. You’d better learn and experience how things work on the internet and what you really want with a Web Site before entering a road that is hard to turn.

When you have a small amount of changes to your site or limited content (changes) you can also do without a CMS. A CMS facilitates the maintenance and the initial  design , but if the  Web  Site is rather static, a CMS is too strong for building and most of all — maintaining the site.

In the last case, if you are not eager with (new) technology, you could also save yourself the CMS experiment. A CMS requires knowledge, constant upgrades because of new editions of the CMS that come to the market and in order to use the latest features you need to upgrade.

But there are also a lot of situations when you could really profit from an CMS. Many of these advantages are related to previous mentions examples, but these could become a benefit if they match your background and your situation.

The low maintenance costs for example. Obviously you need a lot of maintenance to profit from this. First you have to make costs and only afterwards you can profit from (cost) savings. A lot of maintenance on your side would be a factor to implement a system. Think of the case where you have to update content in different languages, for example.

Changes are also easily made, but these are limited to the boundaries of the CMS. In this case you should accept the fact that the layout of the Site is standardized.

With some knowledge and experience you are able to setup a CMS. The first time will take quite a lot of work, yet even this could be an advantage. If internet is your business you might as will invest in some technical knowledge. Internet is a business where the separation between technology and business is less clear to make.

For very Large Sites the Yes-No-CMS brings new complexity and issues. A CMS could then be used but for only a part of the whole Web application, for example not for the support of the front end, but for the part just underneath (the mid-office or back-office)

Just check this with your situation and choose your option.

© 2006 Hans Bool