Content Management Systems
Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2003 9:25 pm
I've rencetly been downloading and trying out various Content Management Systems (PHP of course) just to check out how good they are and to see what features they offer.
Now, out of the systems I've tried out only 2 of them were any good, the rest were not too hot to say the least mainly due to a complete lack of user-friendly-ness and an incredible amount of needless loading times.
For example a lot of them would take the same amount of time to load a page if it contained a whole load of info or just a small bit of text telling your there's no content to load. There's just no excuse for it.
So, as far as design goes you should always make sure any Content Management System to decide to create follows a couple of simple rules.
1. Try to make sure your CMS only loads what it needs to. If half of your pages require a certain group of functions, and half of them don't, then don't load the functions on every page.. it's just a waste of time.
2. Remember that you will also need to think differently depending on if you are creating a CMS for personal use, or if you are planning to make it available to the public. If you think you will probably make it open-source at some point then make sure everything is well marked and documented, and that it can be easily customised to suit another type of website.
Obvious really, but it's more over-looked than not.
Now, out of the systems I've tried out only 2 of them were any good, the rest were not too hot to say the least mainly due to a complete lack of user-friendly-ness and an incredible amount of needless loading times.
For example a lot of them would take the same amount of time to load a page if it contained a whole load of info or just a small bit of text telling your there's no content to load. There's just no excuse for it.
So, as far as design goes you should always make sure any Content Management System to decide to create follows a couple of simple rules.
1. Try to make sure your CMS only loads what it needs to. If half of your pages require a certain group of functions, and half of them don't, then don't load the functions on every page.. it's just a waste of time.
2. Remember that you will also need to think differently depending on if you are creating a CMS for personal use, or if you are planning to make it available to the public. If you think you will probably make it open-source at some point then make sure everything is well marked and documented, and that it can be easily customised to suit another type of website.
Obvious really, but it's more over-looked than not.