Part 1 on the topic “Death to the CMS” got a lot of people riled up. So, I had to follow it up. Everyone keeps asking me what the answer is?

THANKS FOR COMPLAINING RON, BUT I DON’T SEE MANY ANSWERS IN HERE? WHAT’S THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM?

Look friends, I’m just the town crier here. If you wanted a mechanic, I can don that hat too, but you’ll need to pay for the honor of seeing my uniform. These are serious times that require deftness and honesty if we’re going to get anywhere. We’ll talk solutions, but I’m fleshing out some big thoughts. Plus, it’s a topic that requires more voices in the field discussing their experiences, motivations & the specific needs of their companies if we’re going to get anywhere.

So what’s next? Let’s reflect on why the content management systems (CMS) as a whole serve the needs of large (and small) organizations, companies and pretty much all of us.

1. Gives user administrators the power to delegate control of web operations.

This is obviously the #1 reason we use content management systems. Having one person manage a platform is more than unwieldy and we needed to give everyone from content authors to secretaries the chance to manage the information that needs to be shared. The CMS enables us to control who has access and to create intricate steps if necessary to ensure the flow of information is shared across the campus. This makes everyone’s life easy when it works well and let’s be honest, for the most part it does.

2. The webmaster can’t write or deal with people.

The trend of training writers to manage web content, because of the dearth of well-trained web people. It’s a lot like someone who can act, sing & dance — those people are hard to find anyway, so expecting a web developer who can write, sling code & posses baseline people skills was threading a needle in a world where there aren’t really that many programs able to train someone to take said jobs. So CMS make it possible not to need a web programmer in the marketing area where websites were increasingly being housed, because IT people didn’t understand branding concerns. The CMS stepped in and became the “development” bridge and for the most part, this model serves the purposes of most places. They just replace the platform or find someone who can make it conform to their needs.

3. Decreases wait times

“We need this now” is a common refrain amongst content owners who want their information prominently featured and deployed quickly regardless of competing organization demands on the time of those publishing it. A CMS platform can help whoever is managing the site with the tools to help implement these high-demand solutions quicker than having to build a custom solution.

4. The website is a potluck.

Rather than view the web as the domain of one person or a department, CMS help promulgate the idea that the website is a shared resource that takes everyone’s participation to bring to fruition. Keeping end users, content owners & subject matter experts engaged is one of the keys to a successful, vibrant web presence.

Even if it were financially tenable for organizations to employ an army of web personnel who built their site from scratch, so many of the routine tasks that make everyone’s lives easier would go away.

Surely there are lots of reasons to stay the course with the CMS. What I’m thinking hard about is what that future looks like moving forward and will revisit in Part 3 & final part of this series.