The Best CMS

“The best CMS is the one that fits the end user’s needs, but there are a few caveats.”
— Mario Fanzolato, Veb Founder

The best CMS has been sought after since publishing platforms have become the norm for everyone from seasoned bloggers, to freelance/agency designers, and finally to large corporations and media sources. But is it like searching for a unicorn, or does the mythical creature actually exist?

Since the best CMS is, in fact, the one that fits the end user’s needs (with a few caveats), it's tough ranking the ideal content management system. Still, it's fair to say that as a website grows (and grows in popularity), more features & functionality will likely be required. Increased flexibility of both design and layout helps as well. And, of course, content structuring needs to be consistent throughout the lifecycle — making articles, podcasts, and/or videos easily manageable for website administrators, and intuitive for site visitors to navigate.

CMS Basics

It's difficult to sum up what a CMS should consist of in terms of its foundation. A simpler way to go about this would be to analyze the various elements from the outside in (using the output itself, or in other words, the websites created on the platform, as a measure of its effectiveness). More specifically, a couple of questions need addressing.

Audit Website Examples

  • Do Web pages load quickly?
  • Is the site (along with any forms, checkout experiences, and/or gated content) secure?
  • Is it compatible with major browsers (including older versions) and, in some regards, operating systems?
  • Are there both page-specific and global content areas (within the header/menu, body copy, footer, etc)
  • Are there designated marketing sections or lightboxes (such as sidebars, announcement bars, pop-ups, etc)?
  • Can visitors find their way around and know where they are at any given point (with the help of breadcrumbs, page titles [often identified by H1 and/or H2 HTML heading tags], search boxes, etc)?
  • Is the site SEO-friendly (allowing for relevant, searchable content via the organic/editorial listings of major search engines)?
  • Are the site and its individual pages directly shareable by visitors to their social networks and online communities at the click of a button or link?

The best cms can execute the above-mentioned with a very successful YES. Of lesser significance is whether WYSIWYG (i.e., what-you-see-is-what-you-get), drag-and-drop, visual canvas, and/or rich-text/plain-text editors are used to do so. Still, consideration should be given to maintaining the separation of content from design — one of the underlying principles (albeit of decreasing popularity) of a CMS in general.

Who is the Best CMS for?

There are 3 distinguishable markets that a content management system can directly serve (in some cases simultaneously):

  1. Web professionals (eg: UX/UI designers, developers/programmers, digital marketers, website strategists, branding experts, etc)
  2. Organizations such as businesses and non-profits (along with their respective owners and staff), typically denoted as consumers or end-users
  3. Prosumers, meaning individuals (or, in some cases, companies) independently managing & marketing their own sites AND making it a major part of their business strategy (through regular/professional blogging, for example)

While many consider specialization to be the key to success, when it comes to technology, it can often get in its own way. The Interwebs are becoming increasingly complex, with people naturally needing to wear multiple hats in order to adapt to change. Luckily, if a CMS (preferably a hosted, automatically-updated CMS) tailors to many types of publishers, workload is somewhat replaced with workflow. It becomes a very practical tool (capable of lead generation/qualification, etc) as opposed to another thing to worry about.

Managing seemingly-countless apps isn't an option for prosumers especially. This rapidly growing category more often than not has to spend the same or even more time marketing their business relative to working on/in it. The former two categories most definitely need to adapt to change as well, so the best CMS should arguably be all-inclusive as far as future-proof software (taking into account modern Web practices/standards) is concerned.

Mario Fanzolato