The slidedeck from a CMS comparison presentation for Souther California Web Designers and Developers

1. CMS Meetup Comparing and contrasting Content management systems

2. What is a CMS? Framing the debate.

3. Wikipedia says A content management system (CMS) is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to do the following: Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data Control access to data, based on user roles (defining which information users or user groups can view, edit, publish, etc.) Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data Reduce repetitive duplicate input Improve the ease of report writing Improve communication between users In a CMS, data can be defined as nearly anything: documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, and so forth. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation. Serving as a central repository, the CMS increases the version level of new updates to an already existing file. Version control is one of the primary advantages of a CMS.

4. I say it's a pre-fabricated (pre-fab) house. It's all about what needs to be done.

5. Open source versus closed source Brief comparison of open source, hosted and paid

6. A few major CMS's Wordpress Joomla! Frupal Modx Silverstripe (paid) Mediawiki Concrete5

7. Others http://www.onehippo.com/en/products/cms http://pyrocms.com/ http://typo3.com/ http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ http://umbraco.com/ http://www.phpwcms.de/

8. Great comparison resource cmsmatrix.org

9. Playing with fire Although CMS's are often sold as empowering the client to take charge of their content, they also empower others. Sometimes they can also wind up disempowering.

10. Why a CMS? User editing Development flexibility Add-ons and plugins

12. Points of Comparison Budget Time constraints Technical ability Design ability Content creation and updating Current add-ons and resources Need for training CMS support base. How active? Personal experience Open source as delegation Add-ons. A Blessing and a Curse. Cross conflict resolution.

13. Purposes Add/Edit content Management Theming Maintenance