People are for ever saying they want to be able to update their entire site themselves.  Our standard response is “are you sure?”!  The reality is that often clients want to be update to update their entire site, but actual truth is they don’t need to.  For most people the content doesn’t need to change that much to warrant the expense of a content management system(CMS).

There’s a few options when it comes to CMS

Bespoke / custom content management

90%  of the work juicy has undertaken in the last 7 years has been bespoke CMS.  This basically means we look at your individual requirements and build a web based CMS system to suit your exact needs.  We’ll make sure it covers all the functionality you need, it gives you the ability to change all the important sections of the site, and most importantly it’s super, duper simple to use!

The huge advantage of taking this route is that the system is totally developed around your needs.  Through a consulting / brainstorming process your requirements are developed for now and the future.  The system would be built to exactly fit any business process, it can integrate with other internal systems as required.  We build the majority of our bespoke CMS in Microsoft .net which means the standard technology used can be picked up and taken to any server or any agency with .net skills.  The systems are totally reliable, robust, license free and can offer a limitless amount of functionality.

Yes the costs for developing this route can be more expensive than buying something off the shelf, but you get what you pay for, and this is the best route for clients with specific needs and requirements, high transaction or users numbers, bespoke business processes etc.

Example Sites

Portsmouth Football Club has a complete custom CMS designed and created by juicy which allows them complete control over each page including banner adverts, Flash-based galleries, PFC TV and everything in-between. It is incredibly detailed and does exactly what the marketing team need.

www.portsmouthfc.co.uk

Virto Group have a multilingual, bespoke CMS system allowing them control over 80% of their content and imagery in multiple languages.

www.virtogroup.com

Out of the box

A small amount of the work we’ve done in the past has been using out of the box CMS systems.  This has mostly been as a result of inheriting a site from a previous agency, taking over maintenance and support of a site, or very occasionally there’s been a technical request to build using a particular solution.

There are some great out of the box solutions out there that can provide a huge range of functionality for you the client, however there are lots and lots of drawbacks…

1 size fits all – Most of these systems are notoriously hard to customise in terms of functionality and look and feel.  So if the system doesn’t quite match your requirement or business process then it can be timely and costly to modify.  You may then be restricted in the agency you choose to work with as without some previous experience or knowledge it may be hard for them to produce the project to your spec.

The kitchen sink – Some out of the box CMS systems do literally everything under the sun.  Great, loads of functionality you might think? However when you only need to use 10% of what it can do you’re left with confusing, complicated and unnecessary user interfaces showing a hundred functions you don’t need.

Tied in – Some third party systems, and particular CMS systems developed by many web agencies themselves, tie you in by license or technology which mean your site HAS to be hosted by them at a premium cost, the databases sit with them so you can’t take the data away, the source code sits with them so you can’t take it with you etc, you get the idea!  We’ve come across this issue time and time again that client basically end up getting stitched by the agency they originally chose to work with and can’t take their site anywhere with them.  Some clients have been suckered in with the incentive of cheap monthly licenses which basically mean in the small print they never own the site or the system. This doesn’t give our industry a good name and usually ends up with a big fall out from client & agency somewhere down the line!

Training - Most of the off the shelf systems are complicated to learn.  You might even need to pay for training to understand how to use them.  They are often built by developers, who (bless them) don’t always think about the end users.  So you often find the interfaces aren’t very intuitive.  Because you often have too much functionality and control (because the system has been built to try and fit all eventualities) then you can often very easily break your site unless you have really good knowledge of web development and coding.  In our opinion this defeats the object of a CMS which should really meant that you don’t have to be a web developer to maintain your site!

Can you tell we’re not fans of off the shelf CMS solutions yet J

Example Systems:

Kentico CMS (www.kentico.com)

DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com)

Immediacy (www.immediacy.net)

Web service simple CMS

The new breed of digital technology has spurred a huge number of excellent web services.  These are basically systems that are set up and built to provide functionality to a limitless number of other sites.  Great examples are WordPress blogs, and the gambling engines that power almost all gambling websites.

juicy have developed a simple web service CMS system to clients to maintain their entire site content if they wish (or we can lock down and limit to certain pages).  The service is absolutely perfect for smaller, content rich sites.  It allows you to maintain and change any of the content you need using a really simple web based interface.  You can access the system anywhere as long as you have a web connection.  It will even work on most mobile phones!  The system lets you change your text, upload images, add new pages and more.  It’s all very controlled though so you can’t break your site (unless you try really, really hard!)

It’s been thoughtfully designed for the end user so they don’t need to know any web design.  You just have to be familiar with using the web itself, as it’s just like browsing a website.  There’s a really, really simple editor that allows you to style they text within certain controls.

The system is a really great low cost, high functionality way for clients to maintain their own sites without having to invest in complex systems (bespoke or out of the box).  Because of the way we’ve built the system if can be plugged into any site regardless of technology (except for Flash at the mo, we’re working on that).  We don’t own the site or the content, you don’t even need any databases or anything complex so if you decide you wanted to go your separate way from juicy the site is yours to take away.  Basically you’re just renting a simple system to maintain the content and when you don’t want it anymore you don’t have to have it.

Demo of our CMS coming soon!

If you want some advice or help choosing the right content management system for your business please feel free to drop us a line, we’re more than happy to help. Call us on 01202 312312