Why do we need CMS?

Why do we need CMS?

Sometimes we are fed up with the CMS in our life. It is not as flexible or powerful as we wish it was. We may even wish it didn’t exist and we would be free to manage our website the way we want. Beware: life without a CMS is a terrible thing to live. This post travels back in 2001, when website and their content were exclusively managed by hand. Meet Ben, Webmaster for a cosmetic firm who has to mind a very large website.

8:42 am
Ben arrives in the office, turns on his computer and almost spills hot coffee on his keyboard : the homepage from 6 weeks ago is live again. He shouts. Someone over wrote the latest version again. As he is used to it, he always keep a backup on his desktop, so he can quickly fix it. He wishes he could know who did this, to have a word with him/her, and perhaps shout to him/her a little bit.

9:14 am
A new sub-site is planned to go live in two weeks time. Ben is in a hurry, he has just achieved designing the templates and now has to create each and every pages of the sub-site. Why would he complain ? Setting up 54 pages from scratch never killed any webmaster. And who needs spare time anyway?

10:07 am
Franck, from Marketing Department, rings and is not so happy. Results on Altavista are showing funny description for Dandruff Away, the firm new anti dandruff shampoo : “Wax-wax, a revolutionary hair-removal solution to make sure your legs are soft as silk”. “Oups” Ben says, someone forgot to update the meta description when the Dandruff Away page was sent live.

11:21 am
Ben almost spills dark coloured fuzzy drink on his keyboard : the homepage from 2 weeks ago is live again. He shouts, fixes it for the second time of the day and thinks he definitely needs to find out who did this.

11:38 am
“Hey everyone, I am updating the “About Us” page, don’t touch it for now guys.”, Peggy shouts from her cubicle, 3 rows away. Ben thinks he does not understand her constant need to shout that loud and update that bloody “About Us” page.

1:00 pm
Lunch. Ben manages to avoid Robert, a guy who always talk about menus built with Java applets.

1:44 pm
Margaret and Stephen, from Communication Department, are upon him. They need help as they have been both working on the same page and kept over writing one an other amendments. Now they don’t know what the new page should read as they don’t have a copy of the initial version anymore. Ben feels tired.

2:15 pm
Ben almost spills caffeine free tea on his keyboard : the homepage from 8 weeks ago is live again. He shouts, fixes it for the third time of the day and wishes there was a way it didn’t happen again.

3:27 pm
Ben takes a break. His personal way to unwind is to browse his website to check everything is in order. Dedication. Unfortunately he has to shout and jump and move his arms very fast when he discovers the new version of the “Delivery Policy” pages. The layout is totally different from the rest of the site : the logo colours have been altered, the left hand side navigation is gone and there are blinking red heading all over the page.

5:56 pm
It took a while but Ben finally managed to fix the “Delivery Policy” pages. It took even longer to explain to Henry why he should not amend it in such a way.

6:22 pm
Ben feels like going home now. Instead of that he almost spills mineral water on his keyboard : the homepage from 5 weeks ago is live again. He shouts, fixes it for the fourth time of the day and wishes there was a way it didn’t happen again.

6:31 pm
Ben goes home. He has a sore throat.

Now you know why CMS were invented: to prevent webmasters from getting sore throat after shouting too often and too loud.

Source: http://bit.ly/4tAFXJ