Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

This is a rant. And it is a rant on behalf of the hundreds (thousands?) of nonprofit organizations whose website is stuck behind a custom CMS - one that was written by some web development shop or another, and migration off of that custom CMS is going to be a nightmare.

As the author of a custom CMS (it did have the advantage that it was released as open source, but it never caught on, so it still counts as custom) I know what it is like to put my heart and soul (and time) into a CMS, and want my clients to get what they want. I wrote that CMS back before there were any really good open source ones, like most of the custom CMS out there.

But, that was then, and this is now. There are quite a number of really good CMS systems (both open source and proprietary - I’d say there are a good solid dozen) that have large user bases, many developers and vendors who implement them, and their are lots of new modules and functionality being added every day. There is absolutely no way that one single web development shop can provide a CMS solution that is better in quality or functionality than what is available out there right now. In fact, even if you just focus on the “big three” open source CMS - Drupal, Joomla and Plone, 85% of nonprofits will likely have their needs fully met. The other 15% might want or need a more specialized CMS (like OpenACS, or a proprietary one,) or might need some modules developed for them.

Most custom CMS that I’ve seen lately are sorely lacking in features and/or usability, in comparison to what’s out there, and available. Of course, one could argue that migration off of one of the more popular CMS to another one is difficult - as difficult as migration off of a custom CMS. This isn’t the case for a couple of reasons: 1) The more popular these CMS get, the more people need migration help, and the more resources are available for them (just google “joomla drupal migration“.) 2) More people than just the person who set the CMS up can help do the migration. Unfortunately, relationships with vendors go bad, and being stuck with data in a custom CMS makes migration away from a bad relationship that much harder.

This is the moment for nonprofits to stop accepting proposals with custom CMS, and to make it clear in the RFP that a custom CMS will not be acceptable. It’s also the time for web developers to let their babies go, and start building their business on a well-developed CMS. (Hint: I hear there is way more Drupal demand than supply of expertise.)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under Open Source, Web Tools, Web/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.