15 July 2011
Mark Palmer looks at why content managed sites should be a key part of any web designer and developers offering to their clients.

Back in the early days of the web, users could not comprehend the concept of editing and controlling the content on their own sites. For web designers and developers, this was a lucrative time. Knowledge was power. However, power as we all know, corrupts.

As a result "Web Designers", many of whom were no more than 14 year old kids operating from their bedrooms, charged exorbitant sums for very simple updates to websites. This led to a distrust of web designers as a whole and a drive towards clients demanding a means of updating their own content without incurring further expense.

Initially this led to a flurry of bespoke, non-standard content management systems. System actually flatters what was being delivered. Usually these were PHP or ASP based and did little more than allow users to add 'Latest News' stories to their sites. Still, it was better than nothing and certainly better than paying the local schoolkid £200 a pop to do it.

Jump forward 10 years and it is almost inconceivable to think of building a client site without content management. The increased usability and flexibity of tools such as Wordpress, Drupal and to a lesser extent Joomla has made implementing a content management system integral to all good web designers offering to their clients.

In particular, the recent move to Wordpress 3 with it's highly flexible approach to templating, menu creation and content manipulation has almost made it easier for developers to build a content managed site for a client than it is to build a static site.

The wide range of plugins and add-ons allow developers to build in all of the features modern clients require, such as integration with social media, SEO compatibility and the ability to manage content on an almost daily basis, without having to re-invent the wheel and code this functionality from scratch. And the web designers aren't the only beneficiaries of this sea change in approach. If developers have to spend less time developing then sites are less expensive for clients. Surely a win-win situation if there ever was one.

Of course, there are still barriers to overcome with content management. No CMS is going to give clients WYSIWYG drag and drop type editing (although Wordpress widgets come close) and there is always going to be a level of compromise which the client must accept about what can and can't be edited without some degree of technical knowledge. That said though, most designs should be editable in the most part. If your designers is saying that they can't provide a content managed site then you should consider looking elsewhere. After all it's easier than it's ever been to provide full control to the end user.

It's easy to look back to the past with nostalgia, but is there anyone out there who really would like to sit down and stare at a blank PHP page and build a bespoke CMS in this day and age. More to the point, in this climate, is there any client out there who is willing to (or deserves to pay to) indulge you?

I doubt it.