Since my early days of web development, clients as well as staff, dreamed of a day when managing a site, from design to content, would be easier. A great deals of development costs traditionally have been do to the need to create page after page literally by hand. Then there is the entire issue of maintenance. Certainly it is financially beneficial for us that an average client doesn’t have the required skills to manage a site, thus the name ‘Webmaster’ was created. To me though, as a business advisor as well as web developer, it seemed that it was not a very smooth and integrated process.

Then a few years later, we began working with Php. We had worked with other technologies in the past such as PERL, JAVA, C++ , but each suffered from deployment issues from scalability and development costs. PHP was an excellent, scalable, affordable and community supported language. We started with some smaller applications that cut our development time (and costs) on our projects. Still though, the myth of the ‘Web Master’ persisted.

When the early iterations of Content Managements Systems started coming out we were initially excited. That soon receded. The main problem was that the early CMS didn’t lend themselves well to design integrations (template systems). What this meant is that one has to give up a great deal of control design wise to increase the sites functionality. So we stayed with php templating or complete custom application design which as one can imagine is a more costly route. We dreamed of a day that we could have it all…the ability to apply a CMS to the design, not the inverse. Complete control over the site for the client from an online admin. The ability to add modules and scalability to grow. We waited…watched and researched….

I can finally say, with no hesitation, that it’s time has truly come. Sure, enterprise applications have had many great abilities for a few years now, but it’s not feasible for a SMB to shell out $4000 on such systems. Now we have affordable CMS software that ranges from free to $400. Now you have the equalizer. It’s not just for the ‘big boys’ any more.

When it comes to free…. Mambo Open Source and OsCommerce are truly amazing and getting some attention around the industry. With these 2 simple tools once can develop and manage an excellent SMB online component. Each is blessed with a dizzying array of tools and deployment modules that make many a commercial product look as though it was time to pack it in. Above and beyond each applications base install goodies, there are virtual communities that have many, many free and commercial add-on’s that cover any imaginable solution.

So next time your planning an upgrade…have a look into some CMS applications.
It’s the wave of the future. Surf on!