Content Management Systems (CMS): Small Business Beware!

I don't have a problem with CMS.  But finding myself ripping out an inappropriate CMS implementation for my umpteenth client to replace it with a marketable, search-compliant, unique and fit-for-purpose web design does make me think I have an issue with small business designer's whose only solution is "CMS:  now what was the question?".

The two critical tests for CMS are:

1) Will the site have large volumes of frequently changing content?  If the answer is YES (large volumes and frequently changing), then a CMS may be appropriate depending on how your designer answers test '2' below.  If the answer to "1" is "no" then don't go near a CMS - or join the ranks of disgruntled businesses finding themselves shelling out large cost for even minor structural changes.  If you have only minor content amends to make, or just want to add the occasional news item, there are more nimble solutions you can implement than going down the CMS route.  Small business should think of CMS as a sledgehammer to crack a nut and should force designers to argue otherwise.

2) Test 2 is a two-hander but both questions have to be asked at once:  does your designer understand about search engine compliance AND does the CMS allow edit access to the code?  If the answer to either question is "no", again, don't go near a CMS (nor to that designer).  There are 3.2 billion web pages out there and adding content without being searchable is NOT going to get you found.  CMS promises about "SEO Compliance" should be taken with a pinch of salt, as their facilities only barely skim the surface.  A small business site MUST be search-engine compliant and that means having a designer who knows their stuff, and a CMS that allows them direct access to make the underlying HTML compliant.  

If your answer answer to both the above tests is "no", then stop there.  Get a good designer who understands SEO and marketing and have them write you a bespoke site.  You will save money long term and stand a chance of getting found.

If your answer to the above tests is "yes" I would urge you just to check the following additional tests.

From a technical standpoint, CMS is a content meat-machine critically dependent you having a search-compliant , stable template.  And just like a bad designer can make a hash of your website whether they are using a CMS or hand-writing it, its the sausage-machine aspect of CMS that prompts one final check.

The more down market you go in your choice of CMS or designer, the more likely you are for rot to increase exponentially through your site.  Expect long turn-around times for even small changes and great expense.

Avoid little-known CMS like the plague (although I have seen problems even with badly written Joomla sites - although that's more the fault of the designer).  They create non-standard code filled with bloat (i.e. code you don't need) and compound error upon error with little indication to you that they are doing so.  (I have seen sites with duplicate sets of meta tags - all of them wrong -  triplicate sets of identical Javascript, quite apart from illegal or just bad code, yards of commented-out code (i.e. bloat) with the content section beginning somewhere on line 500... This then gets trotted out on every single page in the site which from day 1 is neither searchable, nor performant, buggy and expensive to maintain.

If you were taking your car for a service, you wouldn't trust a mechanic approaching your car with a hammer before he had even determined what needed doing.  So why do this with your website?