It's been a while since we have had a moment to update our blog, we have been snowed under during the last few months and we seem to have little time for anything other than building great Websites and keeping our clients happy. Over the last few months, we have implemented various types of content management systems for our clients, so we thought it would only be right to discuss some of the different type of content management systems out there.

Content management is one of the hottest subjects of Web development, and something which anyone who might be considering a new Website should give some serious thought to. Content management systems (CMSs) come in many flavours, Off the Shelf, Bespoke and Open Source to name but a few, however their main goals are all the same: to allow anyone to easily update a Website's content from wherever they are.

Let's take a look at the different 'flavours' and discuss some of benefits and drawbacks for each type.

Off the Shelf
An Off the Shelf CMS (such as Adobe's Contribute CS3) will enable a Website administrator to log in and update their content, by editing each page directly. Adobe's Contribute CS3 for example, will allow a user to edit content on existing pages, and add new pages to the Website, giving the user total control over the content. This is a great entry level product for most users at a great price. A website can be quickly and easily modified to work with such products.

There are certain downsides to Off the Shelf products, including lack of scaleability, and they very often come with a high learning curve for novice users.

Open Source
Open Source content management systems are very common place, with popular systems including Wordpress and OpenSource CMS being used to great effect on thousands of Websites. As the name suggests, Open Source content management systems are free to use and readily available, and offer a rich list of features. Open source CMSs can be developed further to customise functionality for a particular client requirement, offering a large amount of flexibility.

That said, using and full blown, open source content management system can be the proverbial sledgehammer, if only a certain sub-set of the features of an existing CMS are required, for example, to update a simple RSS feed, the unnecessary features may result in an unnecessary overhead for the application.

Customising an existing of software for a requirement that might stray off the specification of an existing CMS may incur high up-front development fees.

Another important issue to think about is security. By it's very nature, Open Source is accessible to everyone, and source code is very often exploited to wreak havoc by more unscrupulous Internet users.

Bespoke CMS
When an off the shelf product won't quite do, and an Open Source CMS is out of the question, bespoke content management systems could provide the answer. A bespoke content management system can be developed to a particular specification, meeting any client requirement. A bespoke CMS will very often be developed in house using closed source code (ie, the source code will never be released to anyone other than the developers) resulting in a (more often than not) secure system.

Whilst being the most flexible solution, a bespoke CMS will have higher development costs than any other type type of CMS.

Substudio Ltd encourage the use of all types of content management systems, each has their own place and each has their own particular strengths and weaknesses. Whatever solution we choose for your project, you can be sure that it will be the right one for you.