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#1 2008-03-19 1:31 pm
- Jonski
- System Lord
- From: Parts Unknown
- Registered: 2005-02-22
- Posts: 733
CMS?
A (prospective) client who had previously asked me to design and build a simple 10+ page website for him has now turned around and says he wants a CMS site doing instead.
Now I know what one is and have a (vague) understanding of what goes into building one. But I find myself asking why? I'm probably not going to take the job on but I'm curious about a couple of things.
Firstly he's practically a one man set-up that (as far as I can tell) won't have that much content to change on a regular basis, if any, judging by what he actually does - print buying.
If he's looking to save money by being able to change crap himself surely the initial cost of setting it up will outweigh this? Any pointers on how much more expensive it is would be greatly appreciated.
Also am I right in thinking this is not a designers job but more of a back-end operation?
I think he's just been talking to some besuited idiot down the golf club myself!
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#2 2008-03-19 2:38 pm
Re: CMS?
Normally, when clients talk about just editing HTML, I cringe, because you end up with absolute crap content that ruins the design of the site and markup like:
Code:
<img src="mypicture1024x768.jpg" height="100" width="100">
Maybe he's thinking he'll need to pay maintenance costs. How much does he think maintenance will cost? You may want to ask him this question yourself. I'd try to talk him out of it, though depending on the setup, you (or he) could install a simply, generic CMS and go from there.
How much is a CMS? Geez... some OTS product could be free or rather cheap ($50), all the way up to thousands. There's no answer.
It's more of a back-end operation, in that you need to know some sort of server-side language, a lot of theory, some server setup, and perhaps SQL. But people come to web designers thinking they can do it all. And, to a degree, we have to. You can't be a designer without at least understanding the UI aspects of a CMS. And you can't write a CMS without knowing some design. There's no black line separating the job descriptions.
Last edited by Basseq (2008-03-19 2:39 pm)
Basseq is me, John Whittet.
(Finishing the remainder of the thought expressed in the post has been left as an exercise for the reader.)
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#3 2008-03-19 6:58 pm
Re: CMS?
Hope this isn't hijacking the thread, but I was thinking about CMS's today. We had a guy come in and show off a rather nice custom CMS he built and was trying to sell agencies on it. And the price was extremely affordable. It made me wonder if there would come a time where hand coding site builders will no longer be needed. What roll do you think CMS's will play in the future?
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#4 2008-03-20 4:38 am
- Jonski
- System Lord
- From: Parts Unknown
- Registered: 2005-02-22
- Posts: 733
Re: CMS?
achlan78 wrote:
Hope this isn't hijacking the thread... We had a guy come in and show off a rather nice custom CMS he built and was trying to sell agencies on it. And the price was extremely affordable.
Not at all.
Was it live? Do you have a link to it?
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#5 2008-03-20 3:41 pm
Re: CMS?
It made me wonder if there would come a time where hand coding site builders will no longer be needed.
Your question is a little shortsighted; you're basically asking if there won't be a need for custom applications any more. Which, of course, is rather laughable, at least in the near future, given that you can't find applications that do exactly what you need. You're imagining a time where all possible programming will have been completed? What are you imagining?
What roll do you think CMS's will play in the future?
Probably the same role they play now: allowing clients to make changes to content in a controlled, easily understandable manner.
Basseq is me, John Whittet.
(Finishing the remainder of the thought expressed in the post has been left as an exercise for the reader.)
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