I can haz content management!??

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Don’t rip my head off, all of the following is imo.

Why does everyone request a custom CMS? I have yet to see one project that truly required a custom CMS being written from the ground up. 99% of projects do not require a custom CMS yet everyone requests one. They spend hours thinking about how awesome the management system is going to be but spend very little time thinking about attracting a user base, and of course they want said custom CMS to be free.

Majority of the time the requests come from people who have no discernible design or coding experience, all they have is an idea/concept. They go on about how much time they have put into there idea/concept. Really? You put 10 hours into your idea but you have not bothered to notice that Wordpress can handle every single function you have just requested custom code for?

I mean I have no problem if your going to pay for it; waste your money as you wish. However, if your not planning on paying people you should try to go out of your way and attempting to use a stock CMS (ever here of modding). Under no circumstance can you expect anyone to spend 10-20 hours building a decent system for free (not to mention future upgrades & security patches).

I do understand that some, very few projects, do require a custom management system, since what is needed does not exist. If your someone who wants to make a gaming ladder here’s a tip for you – gaming ladder scripts are already created! Oh, but I see those scripts cost upwards of $100.00 why bother when you can find some PHP monkey to do it for you for in exchange for a staff position in your non-existent community.

Here’s another little fun fact, if your going to start and you do not want to purchase a CMS/Script stop now. You will fail. Sorry but its true. Expenses arise constantly and if you don’t want to spend money upfront your as good as toast later on.

So please take a look at drupal, wordpress, webspell, and though it pains me to recommend it joomla.

Save everyone some time, consider a custom skin instead of a custom CMS. And hell if your OCD runs as high as mine re-skin the log-in page.

Of course there are always exceptions to this, so don’t be upset if I hurt your “feelings”.