This is a rant. And it is a rant on behalf of the hundreds (thousands?) of nonprofit organizations whose website is stuck behind a custom CMS – one that was written by some web development shop or another, and migration off of that custom CMS is going to be a nightmare.
As the author of a custom CMS (it did have the advantage that it was released as open source, but it never caught on, so it still counts as custom) I know what it is like to put my heart and soul (and time) into a CMS, and want my clients to get what they want. I wrote that CMS back before there were any really good open source ones, like most of the custom CMS out there.
But, that was then, and this is now. There are quite a number of really good CMS systems (both open source and proprietary – I’d say there are a good solid dozen) that have large user bases, many developers and vendors who implement them, and their are lots of new modules and functionality being added every day. There is absolutely no way that one single web development shop can provide a CMS solution that is better in quality or functionality than what is available out there right now. In fact, even if you just focus on the “big three” open source CMS – Drupal, Joomla and Plone, 85% of nonprofits will likely have their needs fully met. The other 15% might want or need a more specialized CMS (like OpenACS, or a proprietary one,) or might need some modules developed for them.
Most custom CMS that I’ve seen lately are sorely lacking in features and/or usability, in comparison to what’s out there, and available. Of course, one could argue that migration off of one of the more popular CMS to another one is difficult – as difficult as migration off of a custom CMS. This isn’t the case for a couple of reasons: 1) The more popular these CMS get, the more people need migration help, and the more resources are available for them (just google “joomla drupal migration“.) 2) More people than just the person who set the CMS up can help do the migration. Unfortunately, relationships with vendors go bad, and being stuck with data in a custom CMS makes migration away from a bad relationship that much harder.
This is the moment for nonprofits to stop accepting proposals with custom CMS, and to make it clear in the RFP that a custom CMS will not be acceptable. It’s also the time for web developers to let their babies go, and start building their business on a well-developed CMS. (Hint: I hear there is way more Drupal demand than supply of expertise.)
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We are in the process of finding someone who can help us “migrate” our website to a functioning CMS. We’ve been on one of the custom CMSs that you write about in this post. Should we be able to achieve a migration to drupal or one of the other open-source models? How do we know our options?
It is certainly possible to migrate any website to a CMS like Drupal. The question is how easy it will be. To make it easiest, you’ll need the help of the current CMS vendor. Doing research on different CMS projects might help you figure out what one might work for you. Finding someone knowledgable about different CMS options is a good idea as well.
Certainly it takes time to build the expertise on how to use Drupal, yet it is much intuitive than Joomla. One thing that may be tough if finding which drupal modules is suitable for you – I’ve found druplet.com – which is a assisting site on finding the most popular Drupal modules, or any modules you may be interested in – with over 1000 modules Drupal is the most demanded and developed OpenSource CMS.
I forgot to mention that while we loved using Drupal, we saved lots of time by finding the required modules using http://www.druplet.com
Joomla, Plone, Drupal, phpNuke, Expression Engine…
Yes and No.
Yes and yes? WordPress… Cuz if you’re going to customize it anyway, and yes you are going to customize it, why not go with the simplest solution out there? Best and easiest out of box *content management* system out there.
Thanks for this post. Definitely agree on all fronts. I heard one story of an organization that ended up having to buy out the rights to the custom CMS that they had previously purchased (for their website), because the company that developed it went out of business.
Wanted to say that the best way to find modules at the moment is actually from http://drupalmodules.com/
Many not for profits i have spoken to find drupal extremely difficult to use. It is not friendly to the actual administrator of the website, who wants an intuitive interface. Much of this debate seems to focus on the side of the developer when there are hundreds of non-technical content updaters struggling to use their CMSs.
@Paul, yes, this is true. Many nonprofits have chosen to use WordPress – it’s much easier to put together a simple web presence without developer assistance in WordPress than it is in Drupal, for sure.
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