I’ve previously written about adoption as a primary key to CMS implementation success. The KISS method was highlighted as a central point in user adoption. If the system is easy to use, your user base will readily learn how to use it, one step at a time. If its difficult, many will throw their hands up in frustration. This happens because they feel more work is now required to complete the same task. In effect, they are working for the CMS, not the other way around.

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Open Source Content Management - The Hidden Costs

Just like an iceberg - there is much below the surface when considering open source software

When compared to a SaaS Content Management System (CMS) solution, deploying and maintaining an open source CMS package, either by yourself or via an outside agency, can be surprisingly expensive. An open source integration can frequently incur substantial costs, despite the conventional wisdom. The following is a partial list of costs associated with any open source software implementation:

Software License Costs
This is probably the only good news. License costs are always zero - but keep on reading, there are many hidden costs…

Dedicated IT Staff
Developing and running a quality website takes considerable time and effort. The usual rule of thumb is one FTE - for example, 2 dedicated IT staff each spending half their time on the project and ongoing support.

Hardware
Depending on the amount of redundancy required, you could need anywhere from one to four servers. With SaaS, the hardware cost is built into the monthly fee.

Setup Fee
Agency costs often include basic software installation and hosting setup. This can vary from $1,000 to $5,000 or more, so it’s worth paying attention to.

Hosting
Outside agencies can apply a significant markup here. With a SaaS product - it’s built into the monthly license cost.  Find out from the agency where your site sill be hosted. If it’s godaddy.com (or similar) - then that $100 per month you are being charged for hosting alone might be a substantial premium over the actual cost.

Training
While open source software is free, most open source CMS are notoriously complex. Be sure to account for training costs to get you and your team beyond just the initial implementation.

Site Development
If you are going to develop the site yourself, be sure to include any outside design costs you might occur. When working with an agency - be sure to break these costs out separately.

Software Maintenance
Now that YOU are in charge of the software, it’s critical to budget for necessary security upgrades. Be sure to take into consideration all of the third party add-ons that may be integrated as part of your website development. Quite often a necessary third party add-on (like an image gallery) might not be compatible with the latest security patch releases.

Network Maintenance
There are many tasks associated with network infrastructure that need constant care and attention. If you are hosting your site within your own network, you may need to worry about load balancing, firewall management, setup and installation of web and database servers, and license management - to name just a few.

Support
Most custom developed software has bugs (this definitely includes websites) - do you have the bandwidth to track down bugs? Is there a support phone number to call? Are you going to have to wade through multiple forums and blogs to get your answers?

Conclusion
For some customers that have excess IT expertise and limited CMS demands, open source might be just the solution. However, if your organization has limited IT expertise but considerable business needs for a CMS implementation, an open source solution can bring considerable risk and cost. Regardless of how inexpensive it may appear when downloading “free” open source software, any substitute for an enterprise SaaS CMS must factor in ALL the actual costs when using open source.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series of postings on open source vs. proprietary CMS.

iAPPS Content Manager sees improvements with the release of Version 2.6 enhancements:

The wheels of progress continue to roll with the iAPPS Product Suite. iAPPS Content Manager - Bridgeline’s Content Management System - gets some additional feature and overall performance upgrades: 

Multi-Site Improvements - The ability to manage complex, multi-site deployments is enhanced and simplified with the new iAPPS Site Migration Tool.  iAPPS now supports full sharing of templates, scripts and content definitions across multiple sites.

New CMS Functionality - iAPPS 2.6 includes a new website image gallery library module to enhance front-end applications. The new libary modules allows administrators and content managers to easily configure the appearance and display properties of the image gallery as seen by users on the front-end. Using the iAPPS SiteEditor, administrators can choose between pagination and slider types. The pagination style has options for setting the number of rows and columns of images to display. The slider option has a scrollable preview of thumbnail images. Additionally, the new library module offers the ability to automatically scan a folder, or manually select images that a content manager wants to display in the gallery.

Performance Enhancements - iAPPS usability goes one step further by significantly improving the efficiency of moving between the iAPPS SiteEditor WYSIWYG editing tools and main Site Administration. Additionally, performance improvements have been made for site administration functions within Page Library, Content Library, and Website User Group Management.

Improved Usability - iAPPS 2.6 brings a more streamlined Control Center layout to administrative users. Users of iAPPS powered websites and application will benefit from expanded capabilities in how iAPPS handles complex HTML and special characters in Page and Menu titles. Additionally, embedded HTML tags for improved SEO optimization are now allowed.

Conducting user research and usability tests with real participants who match the audiences you’re targeting for your site or application is a perennial challenge. You may not have ready access to the kinds of people who match your target audience profile. You may struggle with coordinating schedules to agree on a time that works for everyone involved. You may find that your participants don’t show up on time—or worse, they don’t show up at all. You may find that if they do show up, they don’t match the kind of customer who’s most likely to use the site, in which case you realize only too late that you won’t be able to use whatever data you collect from the session.

So what can you do to make sure that you’re doing site research with the right users? Here are five easy steps:

Step 1: Define terms and criteria for recruiting
This includes (A) establishing what criteria the participants must meet, from demographic, psychographic, and/or business perspectives, and (B) agreeing on a fair means of incentivizing participants.

Establishing recruiting criteria is important because if you’re testing the usability of a financial services application, you’re going to want to weed out anyone who’s not intended to use that application. Another example: if you’re designing a site intended for use by the elderly, then you want to be sure you’re not recruiting 20-something’s fresh out of college. Standard criteria that often come into play include (A) demographics like age, income, and domestic lifestyle (married? kids?), (B) psychographics like level of expertise with computers or various web technologies and level of knowledge about the subject matter, and (C) business criteria such as whether they’re a current or prospective customer, and if they’re a current customer, how much of the product / service do they purchase or use in a given month/quarter/year? Of course, you may not need all three kinds of criteria. For example, demographics like income and gender may be moot if you’re doing research on a web application that involves scheduling a doctor’s appointment, or checking email.

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