Do all clients need a CMS?
Posted on 14th January 2009 by James Young | There are 2 comments so far
With so many great systems out there – wordpress, drupal, textpattern etc, it’s easy to offer a client a fully content managed website when a few years back that would have cost a fortune and taken a long time to develop.
There’s obviously a place for clients to be able to update their own sites whenever they want but is a content managed site appropriate for all clients? As a freelancer, the impressive development of open source systems has allowed designers to easily offer a lot more to their clients in terms of post launch updating.
However, having seen a lot of sites powered by various systems, it’s clear that perhaps some clients don’t necessarily need this and often struggle with using a content managed site or god forbid, they decide to start formatting their own text and images because they’ve found the various WYSIWYG options in the control panel – don’t tell me you’ve never handed over a site only to go back in a month to find 5 different fonts and colours in a page or “latest news” from the day you launched the site but nothing since.
Up front or more control?
There’s certainly some scope for a lower initial cost for a site which is essentially static with either no CMS behind it or indeed even the option of a CMS that is managed by the designer who, in exchange for a lower initial project cost can be kept on a retainer basis to keep a site updated and maintain a stronger brand consistency.
I suppose the aim of this post is to perhaps share a few thoughts and generate a bit of discussion on the way websites end up in many cases when a client takes over and what we as designers can do to try and help the client by supplying a flexible solution (in terms of an ongoing agreement) and allowing them to update their sites without the look of the site falling apart after too long.
I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts on this.
Naturally the main drawback is that you often remain committed to a project after it’s launched in a way you wouldn’t be if you handed everything over to the client but I think in these tough times, this might be an interesting way of working for some clients.
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David Barrett
28th January 2009
Interesting, As I lean more to the development/programming side of our industry I have never really sat down and thought “does a client need this?” I have pretty much always opted to give them the CMS.
You make a very good point though, times are hard money is tight, perhaps it is time to go back to the old school way of doing things if only to get prices down and keep business comming in…
James Young
29th January 2009
I’ve always been a designer and found that the development side is something I’ve outsourced or looked at using pre-built functionality wherever possible and things like mootools / jQuery along with the wide range of blog and CMS software means it’s now possible for me to add a lot more to a project than ever before.
However, I am finding that in some cases, it’s the clients who then go on and make “small tweaks” once a site is live and I have little control over the changes but often they result in a break in the design and you go back and check up on a site you’ve spent time designing only to find it looks like a dogs dinner.
It’s nobodys fault as such but to ensure consistency of design and tone, perhaps some clients don’t need the ability to update and change their site as they wish.