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RE: Content Management Systems

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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Jan 27, 2006 1:15PM


> Maybe I am hoping for a perfect world, but are there programs
> out there that are "foolproof" - no offense. I'll take a
> better look at Thinkology.

The issue is that most content management systems really aren't content
management systems. They are page editors. Most of them, by default, are
set up so you can make a page, and then edit most of the content via a
WYSIWYG editor. If there is any structured data templates, it's usually
just a template for a press release.

After spending a year searching for a product ourselves, we finally
decided the option for us was to build a CMS that strictly did
that...maintained our content. We are using Xstandard as the WYSISWYG
editor which is the best editor we could find in terms of forcing
semantic and accessible content editing.

We then wrote our own custom front end, so we weren't depending on the
CMS itself to handle any page rendering.

The key to finding a good CMS is to make sure you find one that can
store the content in a semantic, clean way (XML or standard HTML) and
one that doesn't add ANYTHING to the content before hitting your
template. You also don't want to have to depend on the CMS tool's own
custom template engine. You should be able to make your own templates in
any fashion you desire and only call the content that you need at any
given time.

>
> Any comprehensive reviews out there of multiple products?

Nope. The CMS market is 90% marketing brochures and 10% real comparison
data. ;o)

-Darrel