Web developers, designers, and their organizations frequently find themselves “stuck in the middle” when it comes to finding the right solution for effectively building and deploying dynamic Web sites and creating, managing and publishing online content, digital documents and other Web assets.

New Web Content Management Options for Web Designers and Developers

By Bill Rogers
Ektron CEO and Founder

September 2005

Web developers, designers, and their organizations frequently find themselves "stuck in the middle" when it comes to finding the right solution for effectively building and deploying dynamic Web sites and creating, managing and publishing online content, digital documents and other Web assets.

Large content management solution providers deliver solutions that, although they may be sized appropriately for the Global 2000, don't easily scale down to meet the needs of organizations with finite Web design, development, and IT resources, and tight timelines. The breadth and complexity of their solutions often equates to using a fire hose to douse a campfire – it's not the right tool for the job.

At the same time, core developer tools can be highly effective for building out new sites and Web applications, but they are not designed to support the day-to-day needs of a divergent mix authorized users and site administrators who help keep sites moving forward. The need for things such as built-in security, content and process workflows, version control, translation tools and document conversion tools, to name a few, are essential to many organizations; all bring order and accountability to Web content management processes – well beyond the design and development phase.

However, new Web content management options –such as Ektron CMS400.NET – balance the requirements of Web designers and developers whose talents make Web sites and Web applications come to life, and those of site administrators and everyday users who increasingly must interact and handle day-to-day Web site and content management activity.

These new Web CMS options add up to a new reality: Web content management software solutions have matured, while price points have dropped. These products now provide true alternatives to complex and costly "enterprise" solutions and to basic developer tools that have prevented many organizations from taking the next step to solve their more complex Web content management challenges (not to mention satisfy a wide mix of system users).

The good news is, CMS solutions are enabling Web developers to bring along their existing talents in such standards such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Visual Studio and .NET languages, XML, XHTML, and more -- while allowing them to build CMS-managed sites that support a mixture of users contributing to everyday tasks such as Web content authoring and site updates.

Reset Your Web Content Management Expectations

Consider your ideas about Web content management solutions and measure them against these new realities:

• It's no longer a $500,000 proposition, or even a $50,000 proposition, to adopt an effective, integrated Web content management solution, even one with integrated document management capabilities for handling Microsoft Office documents, PDFs and other assets. Scalable solutions, built on industry standards such as Microsoft Windows, with out-of-the-box functionality yet extensible architectures, are within reach of most organizations and support robust, effective content management and publishing.

• As technology has evolved, user complexities at all levels have been overcome. This includes Web developers and designers, site administrators and everyday content authors.

For those Web designers and developers who have honed their skills with such tools as Macromedia Dreamweaver, there are highly effective Web content management solutions that leverage their preferred development environment.