The need to speed up the design and building of intranets and websites has led to the growing use of content management systems (CMS). But the limited facilities they provide adversely affects the quality of content.
Some cruder CMS systems do not allow the writer to format the appearance of text, for example:
- don't allow the importing of text from other software content such as Microsoft Word or Excel. Or this causes screen corruption.
- disallow indentation
- provide poor table editing features
- do not provide auto bulleting or numbering
- as web pages are added and removed - they fail to manage related links adequately
These are all essential aids to speed the generation of new web pages. Some systems do not allow you to easily preview the pages you are creating.
As a result, you get no impression of the length of the page, the depth of paragraphs and whether a headline will run to one line or two. One of the most expensive and leading CMS systems is guilty of this.
The CMS system should no longer just be restricted to outputting web content.
CMS systems rely on standard templates but the ability to create custom pages must be possible for everyone.
Web communication also needs 'bolt on' extras, such as:
- a sophisticated table editor to handle complex material
- spelling and grammar checking
- readability checks
- using pop-up windows
- creation of graphic image maps
- new graphic visualisation techniques
- creating 'step-by-step' page sequences
- blogging
- wikis
- online surveys and polls
- site structure diagrams
- link validation
- integrated language translated/ localised versioning
- workflow procedures to keep tabs on approvals and corrections, and storing related non web files
- built in web style guidelines and glossaries
- the ability to publish to multiple channels - web, paper, pdf, mobile phone, ipad, Microsoft Word, Flash, elearning
No system to my knowledge has all these built in.
But if CMS programs expand to incorporate such extra features then they will also become harder to use. To get the best out of them we will need experts to use them. Then we will have gone full circle, and we might as well be using HTML and software like Dreamweaver!
CMS is intended for run-of-the mill pages, used by staff capable of using the text styling facilities built into the system.
But there needs to be additional levels of sophistication for the web programmer and the professional writer and editor. The CMS system should no longer just be restricted to outputting web content.