CMS – More important than Content

In the world wide web, as much as the content matters, the platform on which it is placed matters equally. Thus, the existence of content management systems that helps the valuable information to be out there. 

Let’s be clear: CMS is not your website. It also does not manage content for you. It’s not just “the back-end of a website”, either, since there are systems for a lot more different purposes than just websites. It’s not some magic, or a “fire-and-forget” solution to everything you haven’t really figured out requirements for yet. 

A Content Management System is a tool that helps you manage content – create, edit & publish, majorly. The content could be anything – images, videos, documents and more. CMS is the (software) tool you use to support that as a process. Don’t underestimate, but also don’t overestimate, how powerful that is.

There is ample number of CMS available in the market to choose from depending on your use, your content, and the kind of audience you want to cater to. And obviously, the selection is a task when there are even industry-specific CMS available out there. So it is important to select a platform that you can scale and use for at least few years (knowing how tech changes frequently these days)

CMS – Paid, Proprietary & Legacy (It hurts!)

If we talk about one of the niche industries out there which extensively uses CMS is the newspaper and publishing industry. They have a tremendous amount of data and content to manage, publish and keep them safe. To maintain the same, they implemented Legacy CMS systems. 

These legacy systems or proprietary systems slowly gained a lot of traction given their security and content management as cor strength. There are no hassles with bug fixes or software updates, there is a good support and custom designs could also be created. 

It makes a lot of sense for media/news sites, and authors tend to like the way they can just write articles and not be bothered too much about where to publish them in a site tree. Having powerful features like Management of the publishing process Including granular publishing, configurable publishing, workflow integration, text mining, feature-rich with the help of plugins and is browser independent are some of the features that you will look for in CMS.

Unfortunately, these legacy CMS platforms do not allow companies to streamline their content creation and distribution process. These outdated systems are code-heavy and require extensive IT resources for even the simplest of updates. Content developers are always being stalled or interrupted and the constant trickle down prevents IT from tackling more substantive problems, causing unnecessary frustration and bottlenecks.

They are not very flexible in adapting to other scenarios than it was built for and there is no such control over customizations. Also, legacy systems are ladened with ample hidden costs. The license is on a contract based and a fee is to be paid every month or annually depending on the contract. Plus the hosting charges. Not to forget the heavy maintenance charges levied upon along with this to follow. 

It seems these proprietary CMS firms are just here to mint money. Also, there is no complete ownership over your own design and have no control over your own content on your website. Over time, given these issues, the feasibility of Legacy CMS became a burning question and the firms started migrating to other CMS platforms. One of the current trending CMS platform to be migrated to is Drupal. 

Drupal – A clear winner!

Drupal is a free & open-source content management framework written in PHP with a large, supportive community. It’s used by millions of people and organizations around the globe to build and maintain their websites. Released under the GNU Public License, its benefits include – low cost, flexibility, freedom, security, and accountability — that proprietary software fails to deliver. Drupal is free to download, modify and extend the platform. This ensures freedom from vendor “lock-in” and it empowers users worldwide to monitor Drupal’s underlying code for compliance and security issues and fix them quickly.

Drupal community comprised more than 1.37 million members, including 114,000 users actively contributing, resulting in more than 42,650 free modules that extend and customize Drupal functionality, over 2,750 free themes that change the look and feel of Drupal, and at least 1,270 free distributions that allow users to quickly and easily set up a complex, use-specific Drupal in fewer steps.

Drupal shines as a CMS. It provides a user interface that allows you to create and publish your content easily. The platform can harbor unlimited content types, be it text or media, with highly customizable forms. 

The core benefits of Drupal are:

• It is free of cost and no license fee is involved.
• Ability to leverage its large pool of resources – upgrades, maintenance, & enhancements are cost-effective
• Flexible & Responsive UI/UX 
• Long tedious process to make changes on legacy CMS was dropped down to few minutes on drupal
• Client managed Database /server & can discontinue drupal if needed.
• Effortless future enhancements with drupal & easy admin panel handling
• Robust & Convenient For Large Data

With the mentioned benefits, Drupal seems to be a fairly easy and implementable CMS that can work in the longer run. Drupal community comes out with new updates and releases new versions of Drupal. The current version that is in use is Drupal 8. But in no time, the latest version – Drupal 9 is already in the cards and firms already have made plans to upgrade to the upcoming version.  

Migration Experts – Makes it easy for you!

If you are still on legacy CMS, it is natural to be alarmed and wonder about the shift from Legacy CMS to Drupal. But it is fairly a process of tasks that has to be followed very precisely as mentioned below: 

• Review/Study the LEgacy CMS – front-end & back-end
• Carefully understand content formats, user types & target audience
• Carry out an audit for the correctness of data
• Analyze and suggest meaningful usability & enhancement of features
• Plan the content migration
• Redesign front design to rejuvenate the customer experience
• Release for closed user group
• Finetune and final launch

On top of this easy process of migration, there are ample ways for saving cost – the software is utterly free to download and modify. There are no purchase, license or maintenance fees involved. The customizations can be done easily without additional charges. Probably, the only cost involved could be on server hosting charges which are also comparatively lower for open source platforms. 

It is still not too late to migrate from Legacy CMS to Drupal but the idea is to not be stringent about the old systems that have been followed for ages. Technology changes with time and it is better to go with this flow to be updated and have a seamless user experience.

Ace helps you move!

If you have a tech team in place who can man up to take up this migration task, then you are in for great luck. If you are stuck with ample questions about migration and how it can be done if you do not have resources, Ace Publishing would be happy to help and guide you for the same.