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by karj 48 weeks 2 days 22 hours 46 min ago
In 2002 we (smashLAB) created a CMS. To date, it's only used by our clients; but, it still seems much more elegant than other available solutions. As such, we keep exploring whether we should develop a version that other web shops could license.
So, I'm asking all of you to help us with a little fact-finding. What CMS does your shop use? Are you happy with it? Each year, how many sites do you build that require content management, and how much are you willing to pay per license?
Thanks in advance for you input!
by zinni 48 weeks 2 days 22 hours 35 min ago
I actually was thinking about giving your CMS a try, and then I realized that it was internal only.
Currently, we have built sites on custom solutions, Wordpress, Perch and have some ExpressionEngine sites in planing.
Where I find a gap in the offerings of CMS platforms in right between, the full out advanced CMS (EE) and the light ones (Perch). I would love to see something that was sophisticated enough to do multiple custom fields/add pages and yet retain the simplicity of light CMS solutions. The custom fields would also have to the ability to be label intuitively so they are user friendly for the client as well.
by shelkie 48 weeks 2 days 21 hours 58 min ago
I'm the developer here at smashLAB and am the guy who built shiftCMS way back in 2002. The reason you noted is basically why we decided to build the first version of our CMS. Everything on the market seemed to be either too complicated or too simplistic.
But what amazes me is that even in these days of "Web 2.0", the most popular CMS's are still so clumsy to use. Every time I try systems like Expression Engine or Drupal, I just shake my head and wonder how frustrating it must be for clients.
I just keep expecting to see that some has this thing all figured out, but I still haven't found one that really makes sense. It needs to be flexible for the designer & developer, while still being dead-simple for the client to manage.
by zinni 48 weeks 2 days 19 hours 43 min ago
It seems like pretty much all of the companies developing the popular content management systems have never considered experience design. The interfaces almost always take into consideration the experience of the developer, but the end client is always an afterthought. I think there is a huge opportunity out there for a development team to create a CMS that is appropriately designed for the experience of the non tech savvy clent.
Yes this may limit the audience of the CMS, but if you develop something that studios feel comfortable handing off to clients then I guarantee it will sell like crazy so long as developing for it isn't a nightmare. Maybe smashLAB can be the team to make that happen, you surely have the necessary experience as a studio and technological capabilities.
by Artletic 48 weeks 2 days 22 hours 27 min ago
I, and my network of like-minded web designers, use ExpressionEngine for most sites. Overall I'm quite happy with it. It's a commercial product, so support is pretty good. There's a solid network developers creating add-ons and modules for nearly anything. Some things aren't quite as elegant as they should be, but there are generally decent workarounds.
EE version 2 was said to be coming out in the summer of 2008, which was supposed to be a complete overhaul and major improvement on an already solid platform, however, it hasn't been released yet. Beta testers have said it should arrive near the years end though.
I've used MODx, an open source system. It's pretty alright.
I've used CMS from Scratch, another open source system. It's a very simple system that doesn't require database interaction at all. For small sites only.
In general, I'm willing to pay for a system if it has a good network of people to ask for support, or if the company backing it is providing support. With that said, ExpressionEngine is $250 for a commercial license. Assuming the smashLAB CMS is not quite as robust, I could see something around $50 making sense.
Oh, and I design/develop about 5-8 sites per year that require CMSs.
Hope that helps!
by shelkie 48 weeks 2 days 21 hours 26 min ago
Thanks for the insights!
Do you find that your clients catch on EE administration easily? Just wondering if you end up having to answer a lot of questions or do much in the way of ongoing support.
by Artletic 48 weeks 2 days 20 hours 53 min ago
In some instances yes, I do end up answering questions. However, I've begun to use some add ons that remove some of the excess options that clients don't need to see on the backend.
You're right though, it should be more straightforward for clients to manage. I was going to mention in my initial reply that a system that makes it dead simple for clients to manage while offering customizability for the developer would be a tough CMS to turn down.
by newmediaclay 48 weeks 2 days 22 hours 16 min ago
Wow, this is such a relevant question to our firm that it's creepy! We (New Media Campaigns) are the same way and created our own CMS several years ago: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/content-management-system
The difference is that while we built it for internal use, we quickly realized that its intuitiveness and flexibility (it's design independent)made it perfect for designers and agencies. So, we now have about 15 agencies and designers that use it for multiple clients and love it.
However, we've stopped short of making it a turn-key thing like Expression Engine. We still setup the accounts on our end, do the coding, etc. We've been thinking more and more lately about evolving it into a stand alone solution where we're even less involved, but can't decide if that's the way to go.
Look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts.
by transmitter 48 weeks 2 days 22 hours 8 min ago
My studio has a system not unlike yours that we intend to license to other agencies. The only drawback is the amount of time invested in keeping it feature-rich and relevant. We've used the CMS on 6 of the last 9 studio projects. Most requested feature so far has been more/better media management tools which we've since built. If we were to stop dev on our own CMS I'd pay as much as $350 per year for one similar. Its not hard to see the value in the production of a feature rich website in an afternoon. We haven't decided yet on a per site or per cms license structure.
cheers
by chrbutler 48 weeks 2 days 20 hours 8 min ago
We (Newfangled) also have a proprietary CMS that we use for our own site and for all of our clients. We build about 20-30 new sites a year using our CMS.
We first built the CMS in 2000 and have continued to refine and improve it in the years since. We just released version 5.0 of the NewfangledCMS in July.
We've explored various other approaches, including Drupal and Expression Engine (even Wordpress for smaller projects) but continually see reasons why our own CMS has the edge. (If a better tool was out there and we elected to adopt it, we'd probably be willing to incur licensing fees per install.) The most recent version is now integrated with the Google Analytics API, which merges Google's data with our own tracking software to provide some really interesting on-page stats as well as a backend dashboard delivering 9 different reports ranging from a keyword ranking tracker to a leads tracker.
by jayoh 46 weeks 4 days 11 hours 56 sec ago
I am a graphic/web designer starting a new business and have been looking avidly at potential solutions for CMS, email marketing, e-commerce and CRM that I can customize for clients and even rebrand as my own. The best I have come up with is GoodBarry's designer product, Business Catalyst, which has all of this on an integrated platform which is rebrandable. Their once off fee for a "white-label partner" is $2,000.
I have yet to sign-up but am strongly considering it. The cons are that it is a hosted solution so they are your web hosts too and all of their code is proprietary - so cannot be modified or customized. Their servers will not allow scripts either.
I would love a more elegant solution but for a one-person startup without developer skills it seems like a workable list of compromises that allow me to offer a lot of value to prospective clients.
I am really interested in an all-in-one solution with a pretty Dashboard featuring sales for e-commerce, email marketing, visitor and site analytics, CMS and CRM - all that are integrated. This makes it a dream for the small business owner who has to manage it day to day.
Have any of you here had experience with GoodBarry or BC?
Sorry for the slight derailment Eric!
by matthewmeeks 48 weeks 2 days 21 hours 35 min ago
I use ExpressionEngine and have really come to love it. It's more robust than I need for some sites, though. I've found that the $250 cost for commercial sites is more than justified by the time savings and ease of development.
That said, I'd be happy to try something less robust for a lower cost if it were fairly easy to learn, as flexible as EE and fast to implement. I've been looking at SilverStripe and it seems decent, but I haven't had a chance to work with it yet.
I design/develop 10-12 sites with a CMS per year.
by rochers 48 weeks 2 days 19 hours 14 min ago
For people looking for a data store / CMS without all the overhead of learning template languages, installing code, etc, you should check out BitsyBox:
http://www.bitsybox.com
The product is in private beta. Looking for eager testers, ready to integrate. There's a video on the homepage which should give you a quick overview of what they're trying to do.
by picard102 48 weeks 2 days 15 hours 18 min ago
The majority of my web work is done on top of Wordpress. I've invested a ton of my time figuring out how to twist it to suit my designs and feature needs, so something else would need to have a much easier learning curve.