Website Transition - which Content Management System?

Hi Helen,

Selecting a CMS is a crucial decision and the first thing to do is make sure you have plenty of time for the process (I generally think you need 3 months to do it properly) and that you get the right people involved.

You need to list and prioritise your requirements (and when I say "your" I mean a composite of all the stakeholders in the organisation), confirm your budget, get demos, look at costs then have site visits and take up references (technical as well as user ones) for your preferred suppliers.

And make sure you have IT and marketing involved.

Cards on the table, this is a process that I help clients through, as consultancy work.  Having said that, in true e-consultancy style, I would be happy to talk to you in more detail about that, just to point out some of the pitfalls.

You can contact me direct on sarah@cranmoredigital.co.uk if you want to, happy to help.

On 11:45:42 17 March 2008 HelenBaines wrote:

 

Hello everyone

I'm hoping I can get some advice please.

I work for a district local authority and currently both our main website and intranet systems are managed and maintained externally by one of our partners.

However, we are now in position and are keen to look at bringing control of this totally in-house - therefore all development, maintenance, support and hosting of our website and intranet. Our first task is to investigate and find a suitable Content Management System.

As we are quite early on in the investigation process, it would be helpful to get feedback regarding suitable systems and software - those which you can particularly recommend or advise against.

Has anyone recently gone through a similar process and can share their experiences (good or bad!)?

Your comments would be very much appreciated!

Many thanks :-)

Helen