The StoneHenge blog

I got into a LinkedIn conversation the other day with Rob Fields, the Director of Member Development at PMA--The Association for Integrated Marketing. He asked: "Can anyone recommend a good content management system for an ASP based website? Looking for something that's WSYWIG, enables us to easily update content, add events, and gives us control over who can access/changes which pages."

My answer: Wow, Rob, that's a question that needs many more questions before you can get to an answer.

1. How tightly does your website need to be tied to your backend systems? For example, does it have a mission-critical transaction process, like product ordering; or do you want to integrate user input into a customer database? And is your backend a Microsoft shop? If so, you need an ASP.NET solution. I've used Sitecore, and it's good. I've used SharePoint (MOSS), and it's horrible. I've also heard good things about Ektron.
2. How high is your traffic load, how heavy is your graphics and how demanding are your users? In other words, how slow can you afford to allow the home page to load? If you can't afford slow, you'll need a robust (read: expensive) system. I've used Percussion Rhythmyx for a client that needed instant response times.
3. How important is the look & feel to your company? An open-source CMS is easy, fast and cheap, but they tend to have cookie-cutter templates. If you want a really avant-garde presentation, a la Razorfish, you'll have to roll your own.
4. How important is search-engine optimization? If you expect most users to find your site through Google, don't use Flash and DO use XHTML. That implies a XHTML-compliant page-oriented CMS.
5. How technically savvy is your web development team? Implementing a full-featured CMS like Sitecore is a long (6 months or more) process. If you don't have a team with that kind of bandwidth, either outsource to a consulting firm or go the open-source route. My company has implemented a dozen CMSs for clients who concluded it was better to outsource this project rather than distract their in-house team.
6. How vital is it for you to control your infrastructure? If your current site is being hosted by a third-party provider and you don't have any real need to control it yourself, consider Software as a Service. I've worked with Clickability with great results.

In any case, you cannot simply install a CMS into your existing website and expect it to just work. Plan to start over with a new website built on the new platform.