Checklist for Selecting a CMS
Web content management systems (CMS) are a dime a dozen. Getting an overview of what is available on the market today is a Sisyphean task. If you want to find a feature-rich system that not only performs well but is also secure, extendable and well-documented, you need a lucky hand and quite a bit of experience.
Which features make a good CMS? What should I be looking out for? Which questions should I ask my web agency, if I plan a redesign and want to ditch my old system? There is still a big gap between decision-makers and editors, when it comes to choosing a suitable CMS. While the former mainly focus on brand awareness, support, security, and price — editors value other things. Not least usability.
A Small, but Elaborate Checklist
1. Is there a Demo Available?
You don’t want to buy a pig in a poke. Try to get a test-login to a demo system before you buy. You should be able to get a glimpse of the product you’re about to buy and (hopefully) going to use for many years. Does it look intuitive at first glance, or do you fear your team will need several days of training before it will be able to work with it efficiently?
2. Is the CMS Open-Source?
We recommend to give open-source products a chance. The danger of a “black box” is big if you have to migrate data years later. Or if the product vendor suddenly sells the business to a competitor, who in turn decides to trash it.
3. Rich-Text Editor (RTE)
Do you feel comfortable using the WYSIWYG editor?
Can you
- define your own block formats?
- arrange the buttons yourself, and choose which ones you need?
- copy content from a MS-Office document and paste into the RTE?
- create stable, semantically correct HTML tables and edit them accordingly?
- use an in-built spell checker?
4. User Management, Roles and Permissions
Are you able to set rights for creating, editing and deleting content the way you want it? Can you set up a protected area on your site with ease?
5. Images and Asset Management
How is the media center structured? Will you be able to find your media after having uploaded thousands of pictures? Can you put them into folders and/or search the media center?
Can you
- crop images in the backend?
- create copies?
- change the image size?
- add meta data and tag documents?
- add alternative texts (alt attributes for images) and image caption?
Can your CMS create picture source sets, i.e. deliver an image in various resolutions and sizes, optimized for all devices?
Can authors set the focus point in an image? This helps to ensure the essential image part is not being cut off when the image is resized for teasers and thumbnails.
6. Multilanguage
There are big differences in CMS-land when it comes to this topic. It is quite amazing what can be done wrong with i18n websites. Will you be able to translate / modify all form labels, interaction buttons in slideshows or other Javascript components?
7. Versioning
If it’s important to you to store different versions of the same content and to be able to restore an older version, you should find out if that is a feature offered by that CMS (either out of the box, or as an add-on). However, storing pages as drafts, cloning or copying them are standard features these days.
8. Site Structure
If your site has a lot of content, you can easily get lost if the CMS only offers a flat alphabetical or chronological listing. Ideally, you have a hierarchical view of the pages (tree view), which is identical to the frontend: main level 1 / level 2 / level 3 etc.
You should also expect a solid CMS-internal search engine with freetext as well as filtering options. This is especially relevant if you quickly want to filter by authors, region, date or subsidiary (e.g. events).
9. Batch Creation and Editing Tools
Are there practical tools like site-wide search-and-replace? Can I change the status of several pages with just a few clicks? Or do I have to open every page manually, tick a checkbox, and save again? Can I move a site somewhere else with drag-and-drop, and even a whole branch of sub-pages? Can I quickly generate contents with CSV imports?
Functionalitites like these that can save editors a lot of time and nerves.
10. Structured Data
In order to avoid redundancies, make sure you can re-use components and reference them wherever you want. A practical example: Employees’ profiles are maintained in one place only and can be referenced from any other place. You just select the right contact person on a product page instead of typing the name, phone, email again + search for his portrait pic.
11. Performance
Performance is not just a technical issue. It’s simply a nuisance if editors have to wait endlessly until the CMS renders the editable pages (time-to-interactive). Or if your site visitors lose patience because the site takes too long to load — then you might risk losing potential clients. 53% of all users go elsewhere if they have to wait for more than 3 seconds. And Google doesn’t like slow-loading sites either, especially on mobile devices.
12. Security
Online-security is not a nice-to-have feature or pure luck. There are sites that do nothing else than monitor and report security issues of web apps. Fun fact: WordPress is still being shipped by default with an in-built code-editor for their PHP-templates. However, it’s been known for years that this can be a great security risk. Therefore, if you decide to use WordPress, the first thing after installing it should be de-activate this feature.
13. Expandability
Think about what features you might need in the future. Are there any professional CMS add-ons that are useful to you? Do you need to interact with Google Analytics or a newsletter-tool? Make sure to get a market overview by taking a look at the CMS vendors’ module/plugin catalogues.
14. Future
A CMS is an investment. Is the CMS based on a popular script language or does it use an obscure, proprietary language no one has ever heard of? Is the documentation solid and up-to-date? Is the product thriving, i.e. is it being continously developed, or was the last update two years ago? Is there a vibrant community around the CMS?
15. Bootstrapping possible?
No, I don’t mean Twitter Bootstrap. I mean using several applications that sit on your server and need to communicate with each other. Can you (easily) bootstrap the CMS you’re about to choose inside another web app (say, an e-shop, another website, intranet or community site)? Are there well-documented APIs for that?
A few examples
Conclusion
This checklist doesn’t claim to be conclusive or complete. Of course requirements differ. And for some people criterion A is much more important than B. We just think you should at least consider the above points when you’re on the lookout for a new system.
Editing your own web presence should be fun, not a hassle.
This article first appeared in German on our Medium Durchdacht channel, and originally in November 2018 @ zeix.com.