Open Source Content Management still sucks

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6 Oct 2004

Last July I wrote briefly about some of the problems with open source CMS. Jeff Veen tackles the issue this week and goes a bit more in depth. Like other open source projects the problems seem to all stem from the fact that developers of the products don’t think about the end users enough. They transfer their wants and needs and project them onto the end users. The end result is that the product makes perfect sense to a techie, but is utterly confusing to anyone else. This projection also ensures that the product is inflexible and won’t meet the needs of people who don’t have the same sort of sites as the developers.

Henri Bergius replies to Veen’s article with some specifics about what Midgard is doing.

nexflo
October 7, 2004 11:42 AM

very true..

but thats one of the main problems in the OpenSource community. People dont tackle projects the right way…if you do a project (commercial/free/hobby type doesnt matter)…you should still keep your prospective users in mind. Analyze stuff etc.

What commercial CMS u like then?

Adam Kalsey
October 8, 2004 10:47 AM

It depends on your needs, really. Your CMS selection should be led with a serious evaluation of what you need.

Hartvig
October 16, 2004 6:19 AM

Inspired by Bergius I’ve written a reply on my weblog on how umbraco - the ASP.NET based cms that I’m working for - handles the Veen-stated issues: http://www.090978.org/2004/10/apparently-umbraco-doesnt-suck.html

Best, Hartvig…

Robert
December 17, 2004 7:30 AM

I’d love to see some content management that creative departments (artwork, Illustrator, Photoshop) will use. Trying to get these people to keep track of their product is a losing battle. They all seem to have a pile of usb drives, zip drives, external hard drives, etc, and will NEVER be able to get an old piece of artwork back for you. (Not to mention they always use stupid mac formats but that’s another rant.)

David
July 17, 2007 12:50 PM

I’ve had the same problem with open source CMS. we shoipped around and Compass is by far the best CMS out there, priced as montly lease rather than an outright purchase made it very attractive aswell. They have scrrenshots and a demo on their website at http://www.compasswebpublisher.com

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