What is bad CMS design?
- Layouts designed as if they were for print.
- Layouts that make assumptions about the maximum and minimum length of copy.
- Headlines, navigation or copy requiring [non-dynamic] images or flash.
- Layouts with ambiguous navigation.
- Design that fails to accommodate the stylistic needs of future content, forcing the client to come up with his/her own (often inappropriate) solutions.
- Layouts that don’t consider the effects of text-wrapping.
- Designs that are poorly developed (this can make or break it, no matter how good the actual design is).
I have had much variety in my consulting career, and seen some strange things. One thing I thought I wouldn’t see in 2009 is a database driven website ….. without a CMS. Radical new move and forward thinking? No – old style blinkered thinking. It is almost surreal – the idea of content with no content management. Flash muddied the water in its early days, with claims “you can build a whole website in this!” – yes you can but is it maintainable or scalable? Is it hell. One step forward from early static websites maybe. Flash is now accepted and great for certain things – I love a lot of the output, as long it is within its technical boundaries. As a whole solution, no. And now Flash’s rather ugly brute of an offspring – Flex (with slightly more acceptable cousin Director). Another UI focussed development environment. Now then imagine that integral both to your CMS and website. Companies are paying price for following a design-over-data approach to website development, and this is usually only apparent when it comes to maintaining a website. This is especially on the CMS side. When design rules over data, unnecessary hard-coding is inevitable result. The smallest changes becomes an expensive exercise, and those small change requests will only increase when an application goes live.
A CMS provides numerous functions that users of every level could use – from simple text updates, to restructuring menus, tags and layout. For a Flex application? Well, you better either have a permanent Flex resource, and enough to go round – or be prepared to shell out the current rates for LFex developer. i.e. site maintenance, at all important levels, can never be handed over. Content Management System – says it all. But you can make your like more difficult if you want. Companies like Adobe are the anti-web – for them, it is about ownership and control – things that contradict what the www is, where its heading and actually also contradicts the fundamental architecture. Ask a flash developer what a microformat is – cue puzzled stares. They are the data building blocks for data on the www, and ensure machine-readability across systems. New ones are being created, older ones evolving and fine-tuned. Most development medium observe this is less or greater degree. In contrast Flex ………………. requires the Adobe plugin (latest version of course). There was a brief supported theory pre-web 2.0 that flash could be the evolution of website design – a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the static text heavy sites of old. Then everyone quickly got sane – the www is about information, and a lot of information is still presented in text form. An image can be worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean words are replaced entirely (I have heard people use this, to back up that type of request).
Pointlessly dressing up your site is a definite design no-no – good wireframes can be ruined by poor implementation. You are increasing page load, increasing user waiting time, creating a pointless bandwidth bottlenecks. Its just a show-off thing – but to really show-off to users build something simple, quick, and easy to navigate to, and enable them to manage sites, without having to cry out for a developer every time. And looks nice – but you dont have to go Adobe mad – speed is of essence, I dont think you will hear any web user say that they would be happy to have a slower site for needless animations.
Dont be a mug basically – companies like Adobe will take you for what you’ve got, and grind your face into the floor and spit on your shoes after they finished with you.
Whilst companies and development ignore fundamental www building blocks, they are simply setting themselves for a fall, all for the short-term perceived gain. Just as Microsoft stomped through the www, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to hold web users and website creators to ransom, Adobe are doing by stealth. But its the same old game. Simplicity is best, especially when it comes to CMS. Google is living proof that on the www doing things well, and doing things openly is the only way to “dominate” the internet – “dominate” is in quote marks, as people chose google – google was not thrust upon us.
What is good CMS design?
- Accommodates the needs of content and navigation regardless of length.
- Considers not just the present, but future needs and growth.
- Exemplifies page-to-page consistency in element placement, type, colors, and imagery.
- Defines a set of standards that are broad enough to accommodate current and future content needs, but strict enough to maintain strong site-wide consistency.
Navigation that makes it clear where you are, where you came from, what’s related, and how to go elsewhere.- Retains its identity and consistency regardless of what text it contains or how it’s scaled.
- Understands and uses the limitations of XHTML as an asset.
- Developed in an accessible, web standards-friendly way that properly defines and uses markup.
- Designs output by a CMS that gives the client too much stylistic control.
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