Content Management Systems Issues

We have been looking around for a good Content Management System for a while and we have to say all of them fail in one way or the other. All we wanted to find was a system that will let our clients update their pages by just logging in and simply editing it.

We are running .NET on our servers so we have decided to move away from PHP and utilize as much as we can our resources. But we have been disappointed with most Content Management Systems out there are, for the following reasons:

1. Hard to use
2. Not Search Engine Optimized
3. Take a while to load

Hard To Use
Most content management systems like DotNetNuke have grown so much and forgot the main purpose of it existence. To give user control over the pages and let users simply change the content. If it takes a good while for a expert programmer to realise how to use it, how long will it take normal non computer literate person to use it?

When installing CMS like dotnetnuke which is the best open source ASP.NET CMS out there it fails on you. After doing file tests and checking that database connection is active when it comes to installation stage it fails. If you ask me that is poor testing. Once again they have grown it so much that they are forgetting about the main points.

Not Search Engine Optimized
It is confusing to see CMS and BLOGS for that matter that don’t produce sitemap.xml . This is in web standards and should be added as a normal feature but so many open source systems forget to do it, same goes for robots.txt. Sitemap.xml can be one of the most important things, if you are installing a CMS chances are that you are a large organisation. If that is the case sitemap is crucial for your website, it will speed up the process of indexing your web pages.

URL friendliness, to many CMS are trying to be smart and use AJAX to update web pages when some one clicks on URL. Now it is funky, however the content is missed! Even worst having a Global Identification Number.

Good:

www.prosperwebsolutions.co.uk/e-commerce

Bad:

www.prosperwebsolutions.co.uk/?gid=21298usd9232139898dw989832

Take a while to load
What we find is that all pages are generated each time different user goes on to the page, now that is fine. But what if you have hundreds of visitors? Pages should be compiled in to .html document. That way content is being sent and no processing is done on the server. This will cut the processing time beyond believe. Another solution is to activate a web catch however some CMS systems don’t support that.

Best free .NET CMS systems:

DotNetNuke – http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

Umbraco – http://www.umbraco.org/

These are the two that are very popular and seem to satisfy peoples needs, however both of them are not great.

Best free PHP CMS systems:

Joomla! -  http://www.joomla.com/

PHP Open -  http://www.phpopen.net/

These are the best open source CMS that are available for PHP and also are very popular, however once again they are not amazing, but ironically enough they are better then .NET CMS systems that are available out there. They are simply more flexible.

Prosper Web Solutions is releasing it is own CMS called socms.net in next few months, this CMS will be open source and will focus on issues that have been raised in this topic, it won’t be the best CMS out there but it will be simple to use and it will do basic functions that most companies want. Currently this CMS is being tested with Prosper Client Base, to ensure it has a reliable framework.

Written By:
Zan Kavtaskin - Director of Prosper Web Solutions . Prosper Web Solutions is a web design Cheltenham