Then ASP.NET became popular and new CMS’s arrived that were open source, included plug and play modules for very little costs. These systems, whether ASP.NET or PHP, were slick and easy to use. Very little set up time and offered ease of use. The costs of the previous paid CMS’s were reduced. Some drastically lower than a few years prior (about ½ the cost).

Now with there being many open source CMS’s available, (Joomla, WordPress, DotNetNuke, Drupal, or Microsoft’s latest offering called Oxite (http://visitmix.com/Lab/Oxite), are paid CMS’s a thing of the past?

This would depend on your website needs. Not all CMS’s will fit everyone needs. Whether it is a paid CMS or an Open Source CMS. Custom programming can be added to each type of CMS in order for the completed system to be one of use to your organization. But first you will need to determine the needs of your organization. What do you need the CMS to do and what do you want available for your end web site users?

Some other important items include: Host provider, type of programming language and database hosting available, integration with a member database, user interaction, design, etc. The answers to these questions will help in determine the systems that will best fit your needs to begin with.

The CMS you select will be your tool to create/administer your web site. This is how the public will view your organization. Ensuring that you have the right tool is important. Check with your web consultant to provide guidance in outlining the best solution to fit your needs.

• Overall goal of the website – is the site to increase membership, increase product sales, increase attendance at meetings/classes, provide information to users (members and non-members), establish client as a source of knowledge in their vertical market, etc.

• Based upon the goals above, how will the information be shared to the users?  As an example, if the client wants to establish them as a source of knowledge, do they currently have a blog, rss, newsletter, etc.? If not, then this would be a goal to establish for the new site.

• Content - what type of content/navigational options will be available on the site? This will help determine the site structure and if forums, blogs, wiki’s, etc. should be options for the new site. 

• User Interaction – how much interaction with the content would the client want the users to have? 

After the goals were identified, my next step was to review their current site and make recommendations on changes/alterations. In my review of the site, I found the site slow, content and direction needing help, and SEO (search engine optimization) issues.

Since the goal of this client is to increase web awareness, traffic and sales, we decided to change the site and go with Web 2.0 strategies.  Over the past few days I’ve been working on setting the site up using WordPress, transferring domains, organizing content, etc.   As a side note, I am really loving WordPress – so easy to set up sites to include content pages, forms, etc.  The widgets are awesome.

Once the new site structure is set up, we will continue with the adventure to include building the social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.