James, sorry but this is too easy a mouse trap for a company like
Keepthinking, who specialises in creating generic, object oriented,
CMS solutions :-) Like the one in use at http://www.nationalgalleries.org/
My advice would be that you need to start by deciding what you want to
do with your CMS, which is basically of two types - as far as I'm aware:
Option 1. Complete separation between content and presentation - your
CMS would manage the content in a generic way; such content can be
delivered on a number of platforms - separately.
Option 2. Integrated CMS/Website solution, where the CMS comes with a
template system - which can be customised.
In Option 1 your CMS would not 'know' anything about the way you want
to present your content to your audience, which gives you a greater
degree of flexibility if you require a variety of delivery ways,
options and platforms. The advantage is that you're not bound to a
grid, a design structure or even a technology, although you also need
to put in more effort at the beginning to 'see' your content.
In Option 2, the CMS would come with a series of templates out of the
box, so you can potentially deliver a standard website in a shorter
time-span, but it may require more work should you need to customise
it or, potentially, use different technologies (like Flash) for
different parts of the site. This is because the CMS is usually design
with some sort of presentation layer already in mind - usually quite
conventional.
Good places to start looking are:
http://www.cmsreview.com/
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
I hope this helps, but I'd be really interested in knowing how
different organisations approach this issues and what other people
views are.
Regards,
Cristiano
On 16 Jul 2008, at 16:36, James Morley wrote:
> Without wishing to start a whole debate, and most certainly not
> soliciting phone calls from vendors (!), does anyone have any
> recommendations as to an up to date source of fairly high level,
> generic CMS specifications / requirements analysis?
>
> Thanks, James
>
>
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> James Morley [log in to unmask]
> Website Manager Tel. +44 (0)20 8332 5759
> Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew www.kew.org
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Cristiano Bianchi
Keepthinking
Bull Inn Court
15 Maiden Lane
London WC2E 7NG
t. +44 20 7240 8014
f. +44 20 7240 8015
m. +44 7939 041169 (uk)
m. +39 329 533 4469 (it)
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