I just read Philippe “@proops” Parker’s tweet:
there’s no “best” wcm, says @jarrodgingras, but is there a worst one? #fixwcm
My 140 character or less answer is “No” but I have more to say so I will elaborate here….
There is no worst WCMS. In fact, I would go so far as to say that every WCMS is (or at least was) the best WCMS for someone. The reason is this: every WCMS product was built to someone’s specifications. Some WCMS development projects fail in their mission but we rarely see the products of those projects in the marketplace. What we do see are the products that delivered so well on their specification that somebody had the bright idea to get into the business of repeating that success for other organizations.
So every WCMS, at least at one point in its lifetime, was someone’s best WCMS. But software is not static. It changes over time (at least it should) and it is quite possible that poor product management can make software worse. I see that as a very real problem for many of the software products in the marketplace. It takes discipline to avoid feature bloat that clutters the application and makes it less suitable for its best use. Software companies that look to competitors and potential customers for guidance are more vulnerable than companies that listen to their customers who are already using the software.
There is a great philosophy in software product management called “Make it suck less.” The idea is that, rather than add new features to draw in new kinds of customers, make life better for people who already use your software. That is, don’t ruin the software by trying to please everyone.
Sadly few companies take this approach and, as a result, the race to make worse software has a bigger, more competitive field than the race to make better software. Therefore, nobody is going to win the dubious distinction of the developer of the worst WCMS – its going to be a big tie.
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This should be The World’s Worst WCMS implemenation firms (based on complexity over cost plus time to meet those original business requiremnts). That would be interesting as there’s (a simple formula to workout) your ROI on a CMS product!
I asked a question similar to this via twitter, but didn’t get any response:
“How many CMSs are reducing code base, and how many increasing?”
E.g. with Plone, Plone 4 is about 20% smaller code base than Plone 3. This is due to the product maturing and legacy code being removed that is no longer needed.
At the same time no significant new features are being added to Plone 4, but to improve upon everything that is already there (e.g. better visual editor, 400% faster, better large file support).
I’m curious as to if Plone is alone in this, or if other CMSs out there have been reducing their codebase and generally tightening up, or marching towards growing more and more features?
-Matt
You mention no vendors. Is this to appear impartial? Come on Seth, name and shame!
I believe the worst CMS is where you (the editor) end up thinking the most because other people (the developers) haven’t done enough thinking upfront.
And by thinking I don’t mean coding. We could all save so much more time (and code) by thinking first before starting to write product code. (apply that to cars, houses, … you name it)
Ahhh it’s reminding me the adventures for a cms we worked on together. If that client could understand your post, I’m sure they would perform better
You say “In fact, I would go so far as to say that every WCMS is (or at least was) the best WCMS for someone. The reason is this: every WCMS product was built to someone’s specifications.” The problem with that argument, of course, is that most systems fail to meet the requirements. (And most requirements are flawed.) So that doesn’t really hold water.
The real reason there is no “worst WCMS” is the same reason there isn’t a “best WCMS”. There are so many possible variations on scenarios that I rarely come across a system I’d unequivocally say about “never use that.”
Of course, in practice, I’m much happier discussing the positive choice rather than the negative. And yeah, there are some pretty terrible ones out there.
@adriaan, I didn’t write “the perfect WCMS for someone.” I just wrote “best.” No system is perfect. But the fact that a WCMS was productized indicates that the owners thought they answered the requirements better than other alternatives in the market. In other words, they thought it was the best solution to their problem and probably other problems like theirs.
Yeah, but then you’re already narrowing down to *productized* systems, and still, the owners *thinking* it is/was better than others doesn’t mean… Well, never mind, mincing words here, I don’t really disagree with you