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Build rather than Buy: Pitfalls of a CMS when developed from scratch.
Whether you create a CMS from scratch, or use pre-existing building blocks, it may sound as if you are achieving the exact solution that you require. If you analyse the options, you will find dangerous pitfalls and serious shortcomings with the idea of creating your CMS from scratch from a inexperienced developer or you use a readymade solution. A result from such a decision would be a produce which has been poorly thought out and difficult to maintain.
The decision to build rather than buy is essentially for an ascertain that off-the-shelf products could possibly not meet the requirements of the organisation. A customisation effort amounts to a quick abandoning of the consistent architecture of a CMS, in meeting some complex specifications of the requirement.
There are many short-falls in this process. You may find that the CMS designed, has not looked into the matter of the need to change and has overlooked the aspect of scalability, security and true flexibility. The product, after development, might just be a tangent to meet the specific needs of the application.
With the above in mind, it can be concluded that a good CMS product will offer dynamic information store that will allow conceivable structured content to be created. You should be able to define any number of meta-data fields and configure complex database record structures. This enables the structured data to be managed with ease. You get all these without any custom programming, with a consistent interface for managing information.
The template system in the CMS should really separate the presentation and the content and should eliminate the need for programming for creating flexible page functionality. The end result is a flexible template building system, having the ability of dealing with complex web applications, which may include, online catalogue based shops, portals and directories to be deployed rapidly, with no custom-ASP programming.
The general pitfalls of a built-from-scratch CMS include the following:
- In general these CMS are known to frequently present live database records to the website visitors. It does not move the record in a flat file format which could be served faster with fewer loads on your web-server.
- Templates in a readymade products are not custom coded, creating a complex tightly inter related code base which becomes difficult to maintain.
- Most important thing to see if it lacks security that you need for your product.
- Lacks the functionality of true concurrent users, with proper record-locking, and item check-out. You can get all, exactly what you need, when you get your CMS from a company who are well experienced in developing different levels of CMS applications.
It has been known that some of the firms, offer to deliver a powerful CMS for an upfront cost which may be luring, With the well known fact that IT projects, more often run well over the time limit, and have the usual reasons to cross the budget, building your CMS from scratch could be one of those pitfalls.
Serious oversight of designs has been come across in such built-from-scratch CMS, with no flexibility to offer at the end. It is worthwhile to remember that a good CMS represents many man years to accomplish, which can never be replicated through a built-from-scratch CMS, developed within few weeks or even months.
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