CMS - Important Points To Consider - Part 4

Important points to consider for your content management system (CMS).

 

Search engine friendliness

The search engine friendliness for a website is based upon many factors, but the important ones to consider are standards compliance and search engine friendly links. Many search engines ignore any webpage that has a query string in its web address. This can be a tricky issue, so check with your vendor to see if the CMS uses search engine friendly links. Then have a look at a few websites in their portfolio to see if they are telling the truth. You can identify a query string as it contains a question mark. For example, http://www.yourbusinessname/index.php?page=home is not search engine friendly, however, http://www.yourbusinessname/home is a friendly link.

 

Exit strategy

Can you take the CMS with you if you decide to change vendors? Can other vendors host and take over development on the CMS with a minimum of fuss? Do you have the legal right take your website elsewhere?

 

Legal issues

Make sure you thoroughly check your license agreement before choosing any CMS. If the solution is open source check that the developer will agree to provide you with a full copy of the source code on delivery and that you actually own any custom code that they create. If you are buying a commercial system, remember that the vendor retains ownership of the source, so you are making a long term commitment to them.

 

Costs

Determine the developmental and yearly costs of the CMS. The developmental costs can differ according to the quantity of work required to tailor a given CMS and the proficiency of the developer that you need to hire to perform the work. Annual costs may include fees for services such as hosting, licensing and maintenance.