theLAB

I just finished reading Chris Coyier’s article, The “Light” CMS trend. For those of you who don’t know, CMS stands for “content management system.” The content is stored in a database and then served up on a page using a predefined template. The idea behind a CMS is to allow non-technical people the ability to update, add or edit the content on their Web site. It also allows multiple authors and can also allow multiple Web sites to share the same content that will be updated in one place instead of on each individual site.

Chris points out the problem with most CMSs is that they are really only useful to Web people, those who have experience with working with Web sites. WordPress is Chris’ favorite CMS and mine as well. But as I have done more development with WordPress, I see that is does fall short in really empowering content owners in the way that I would want.

A possible solution: “light” CMSs. There are a growing number of these solutions available on the market today. Several of them are free services and at least one of them costs money. One of the reasons that I like WordPress is that it is free, open source software that is continually developed. The price is right for the non-profit organization I work for.

These light CMS solutions contain less features which make them simpler, and I believe, a better user experience for the content owner.

Here are the light CMS solutions that Chris highlights in his article:

• Unify – Currently in private beta. It is a product of Unit Interactive which is headed up by Andy Rutledge, one of the designers I follow on Twitter and RSS. I was not able to take a close look at it.
• Cushy CMS – this seems to be the first player in the light CMS. It is a free service.
• Page Lime – in free public beta. It has a visual editor and reminded me of Contribute.
• Perch – I really like their Web site and they have great documentation. Perch costs about $57 per domain. You host it on your own server.

Anna Debenham reviewed Perch on this week’s Boagworld Podcast. She has also used Cushy CMS. She pointed out that the major advantage of using Perch over Cushy CMS is that the files are all hosted on your own server with Perch. She had problems with the Cushy CMS server going down which meant the service was unavailable. PageLime is also hosted on their servers.

Cushy CMS, PageLime, and Perch have videos introductions about their service and good documentation to get started. It seems pretty easy to implement any of these three solutions. Cushy CMS and PageLime involve adding classes to your HTML code. Perch involved using specific PHP tags and reminded me a lot of WordPress.

From the little research I did this afternoon, I believe that Perch would be the product that I would choose. Yes, it costs money, but the big advantage is that you don’t have to worry about another server going down that you have no control over. As I mentioned, some of it’s features remind me of WordPress. It would take more technical knowledge to setup Perch. It looks like their templating system is quite powerful and gives more control to the Web designer or developer. But the advantage it has over WordPress is it’s simpler interface for the content owner.

One final note: I really liked Perch’s site. It has nice texture and illustration. It uses JQuery for some fun animated effects. The birds in the tree at the bottom animate and move into the screen on pages where you can see the footer right away.

A talk from SXSW on the clever things designers put in their design to add pleasure to the experience. I listened to the audio but look forward to viewing the slides since this was a very visual presentation. I would like to think more about the ideas presented here. It goes on usability to adding value to people’s experience and I am really motivated by that in design.

Over several months the development of what we are calling an “involvement portal” has been underway. It is a social community with a purpose. That purpose is to connect those leaving the campus and making a transition to the marketplace, but these graduates are wanting to stay engaged in the same missional principles they experienced on campus in their new work place world. You could say their new calling. It is a large undertaking as it has a number of similarities to the popular FaceBook.

Dennis was in meetings yesterday where he and others from our ministry met with the firm tasked with coding this web space. We are at the place where we need to hook up their work with our web world. You would not believe all the acronyms used in one meeting as we discussed how to connect the parts.

There will be a beta release of the site slated for August 11th. The goal is to get 400 beta users to kick the tires of the new site and help us ferret out all the bugs. We will say more about this in the weeks to come.