Many of the clients we work with have amazingly unrealistic expectations of content management systems (CMS). Those without one think it will solve all of their content woes, and those who have one moan because it hasn’t !

It is certainly true that a CMS can bring a lot of benefits. These include:

• Reducing the technical barriers of adding content.

• Allowing more people to add and edit content.

• Facilitating faster updates.

• And allowing greater control.

But many CMS’ are less flexible than their owners would like. They fail to meet the changing demands of the websites they are a platform for. Website managers also complain that their CMS is hard to use. In many cases, this is because the ones using it have not been adequately trained or are not using it regularly enough.

Finally, a CMS may allow content to be easily updated, but it does not ensure that content will be updated or even that the quality of content will be acceptable. Many CMS-based websites still have out of-date content or poorly written copy. This is because internal processes have not been put in place to support the content contributors. If you look to a CMS to solve your website maintenance issues, you will be disappointed.