Web Class Blog

Content Management Systems have limitations. Those limitations can be easily overcome in some areas, but other items are very hard to overcome. One type of compensation won’t increase the cost of a site, others will.

A CMS does what it does. Usually it does quite a lot, right out of the box. But if you need it to perform in a certain way, you have to modify it. Due to their modular nature, you can usually expand the capability fairly easily as long as someone else has needed to do the same thing before you. Sometimes though, it costs. And sometimes it costs quite a lot.

Your options are:

• Add an existing free extension. A lot of these exist, so you can browse through to find one that does what you need.
• Add a free extension, and do part of the job manually. If you choose the right part to do manually, you can usually make it work in a manageable manner. Choose the wrong thing, and you’ll get buried in tasks.
• Add a paid extension. There are also a lot of these available, with varying degrees of reliability. They cost anywhere from $20 to $600. Most extensions that allow payment interface options cost something.
• Custom code. If you do not have the skills to do that yourself, then you have to pay for it. Coding is expensive. Expect to pay several hundred for small changes, and thousands for larger ones.  What seems like a small change, may in fact, be fairly big, depending on how it interacts with the existing code.

By understanding where the feature limitations are, you can devise a solution that is cost effective. You’ll be able to tell that one way of approaching a site function will increase costs a lot, while not saving much in management tasks, while another will increase the management tasks only a little, while keeping costs well contained.

If on the other hand your site functions demand a certain feature, and there is no way to get it but pay for it, you’ll have to bite it and do it.

One of the great things about good Content Management Systems is that they are modular. Like Legos. As long as you get the right pieces, you can build almost anything.

The main piece of software dictates what you can add to it. You have to add modules that are designed just for it, not for something else.

Like Legos, you also have to get the right piece to make the right thing. Parts to modular website software do what they do, and they usually don’t do anything else. So out of the few choices you’ll have, you need to choose the best one.

When you need something that is not available, you have three choices: You can hire someone to write the right bits for you – VERY expensive,  you can hire someone to take a module that is CLOSE to what you need, and modify it – MODERATELY expensive, or you can make do – cheap, but you have to compensate.

With good software, a wide range of add-ons are available. If what you want to do is similar to what lots of other people want to do, then chances are you can get it easily, and usually without additional cost.

Modules DO increase the long term maintenance, so we don’t generally like to add them unless they are really necessary.

Get the full scoop in our Advanced Intensive Website Course, where you can get hands on experience adding modules to your brand new website.

Content management systems may have odd limitations, due to programming or use reasons. This means that while the description may say that it can do something, it may not, in fact, do it the way you need it to do it!

Sometimes it is because what seems like a simple difference to us, is in fact, a huge difference in the complexity of programming.

And sometimes it is because we think if a feature in a different way than what the author thought of it.

Most CMS software in the Open Source world is contributed by volunteers. That means they generally wrote what they needed. If their needs do not match your needs, the features are likely to be different.

This makes it fairly difficult to choose good features. You can really only figure out completely whether it will do what you want, by trying it out, or by consulting someone with experience with that exact feature.

Our Advanced Intensive Website Course will help you to be able to get that kind of help – so your website will end up doing the things you need it to, in a way you can live with. Check our Classes page for details.