We were involved in two meetings on Friday last week and both potential customers asked us the same question: "Why did you build your own content management system instead of using an open source platform such as Joomla or Wordpress?"
In a sentence, the answer is simply that none of the existing platforms easily accommodated the requirements of our clients or ourselves.
So what were our requirements?
We needed a solution that met the following primary requirements:- Have a design agnostic, modular approach to content management - recognising that each client's site should be unique and unconstrained by the content management system it uses
- Incredible ease of use for content administration (point, click, edit, save)
- Provide an content editor that facilitates multi-language conversions
- Easy integration with 3rd party tools such as Google Maps, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook Graph API, Amazon and any others that our clients might require
- Versatility and robustness that can be morphed into a solution that works best for every client - not just the common denominator
- Prevent user changes from breaking the site layout and design
A further benefit of Cloudbase is that it is built in such a way that all improvements we make to the system are automatically provided to existing client sites at no additional charge - thereby keeping one's site functionality fresh and budget healthy.
If you are designing a new website or re-designing your existing one, we encourage you to consider the following:
- Can your chosen content management system (CMS) flexibly adapt to your evolving business requirements?
- Will your CMS allow your designers to have complete control over the look and feel of your website (thereby ensuring your site stands out in the crowded world of the Internet)?
- If your business has a key differentiating factor or focuses on a niche in the market, can you adequately represent this on your new website built on your selected CMS or will you look just like the competition?
- Is your chosen CMS search engine friendly in the way it structures your page content and allows you to add metadata?
2 comments:
Wow guys, interesting bit of news. Having used all the CMS's you mention, I can understand why you made the decision to go on your own. I'm assuming you've used proper coding standards and good technical design --- something Joomla, Drupal and (yikes) Wordpress never did, and never will. They're awful in that regard, but unfortunately, my clients and I are sort of stuck with them!
Apologies for taking so long to reply. The notification that your comment had been posted must have ended up in spam, and we have been pretty slack at checking and updating our blog recently.
We hear your pain and constantly hear this from new customers switching from other platforms to ours. Since writing this blog post, I am pleased to report that people are becoming more demanding up-front when they choose their CMS system - something which I think may have contributed to so many bad decisions in the past.
We have certainly done our best to finesse Cloudbase with proper coding standards and superior technical design. I think a testament to our architecture is the value we have been able to add to a massive variety of clients over the past few years - never compromising on our core objective of being design and functionality agnostic.
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