The idea behind Content Management systems is a sound one. You take all of the skill out of adding and maintaining content. You take the html, database and coding work out of the equation. Essentially you give the writing people the tools to write.
It’s a toss up of efficiency. In my experience 80% of the time its more efficient to plan and install a content management solution, whether its a page that is updated 4 times an hour or 4 times a month - if you can let someone else take care of it because you placed good coding behind it then its saved you time.
There is obviously two facets to this - the web design company and in house design - often if you hire in web design or development people that are not part of the company it wont be as efficient as possible. In all cases you are going to spend more than 3 months developing or £8k+ then employ a self motivating web developer for a half year.
The idea is to take all the coding and spend a little more to get it done right at the beginning - universal good quality coding that lays a basis for good site expansion.
Ideally every single aspect of your site will controllable by at least 2 people in your company. Leave it too one web developer and he will be swamped when he needs to be free, and should he ever get ill or leave problems will arise. So spend the time getting either your web team/web guy to make a good content management system and then TRAIN at least one other too use it, including a username/password system depending on the circumstance.
You can opt for out of the box content management - there are good examples available. Joomla is a popular one - or Wordpress could be used for simple sites. But likelihood is you will need to modify these to better intergrate with whatever it is you are doing, and if only one person understands the modifications the aforementioned problems apply.
So let your coder code and teach your maintainer’s to maintain. Further pushing the boat out, why not let your seo people do SEO? - Oh its complicated - because chances are they will want the control of a coder.
This is basically the reason I began writing ‘Pagex’ - Pagex is a seriously bare bones seo content management system. I have written so many CMS’s from the ground up that I know what I want for any basic site. With universal simplicity intended Pagex consists of 2 files. One php include and one php cms management file. My intentions for it are simple: Let people gain real control of their websites, really easy.
Pagex will work around you, not fouling up your code or taking huge loads on the server. It is a quite hardworking simple content management system.
I will write more about pagex over the next few weeks, it is essentially finished and just needs me to annotate code a bit clearer as well as creating a readme.
Aimed to be a content management system for SEO’s and webmasters alike. Because they are essentially a merging breed.
Centralised control of the following aspects - from one file:
I will further delve into my new ‘Bolt on Content/SEO Management’ solution PAGEX within the next few weeks. It will help web developers and SEO operatives alike.
PAGEX - The SEO / Web Development Bolt On CMS.