Internet, We Need a New Kind of CMS

  1. Next Gen CMS Manifesto:
    1. ¶People Friendly
    2. ¶Developer Friendly
    3. ¶Extereme Low Cost
    4. ¶Highly Extentable
    5. ¶High Ownership
    6. ¶High Visibilty
    7. ¶High Security
    8. ¶High Performance
    9. ¶High Scalability
  2. Existing Players
    1. ¶The Heavy Hitters:
    2. ¶New Contenders:
    3. ¶The Old Guard:
  3. Analysis
    1. ¶Comparision Graphic
    2. ¶Comparison Grid
  4. Conclusion
    1. ¶Last Thoughts
    2. ¶What Now ??

Right now the state of the CMS is that wordpress owns the market. Wordpress is AMAZING. The ethos of wordpress is inspring. They are one of the last bastions fighting for everyone to own their corner of the web. Wordpress might be the most popular piece of software ever created.

Next Gen CMS Manifesto:

People Friendly

Real people have to be able to use the system. If my mom can not figure out the system, then it still favors developers too much.

Developer Friendly

Developers need APIs. Developers need Documentation. Developers need to be able to extend, via plugins, via external systems to really make a system their own.

Extereme Low Cost

Because the lower the cost - the more people speak out

Highly Extentable

Plugins for everyone. Plugins that do all kinds of new and different things. 100s of plugins would never work in current systems.

High Ownership

Squarespace is great, but you will always be subject to their terms of service - as they host your content for you.

High Visibilty

Feed the machine, but do so willingly and knowingly. Live on your own terms when you don’t care to fill someone else’s database.

High Security

Russia “likes to play” on the internet. China “likes to play” on the internet. This is the world we live in. It shows not sign of changing anytime soon. Passwords are the weak link. If there is a password, the system will get hacked. 2-Factor Authenication is great for much of the developer audience. It still has not become commonplace for the audience that includes my wife (she is a crazy intelligent woman) who prefers convenience over the “off-chance of a security issue”.

High Performance

If at all possible, a new CMS would put guide rails on developers so that the norm is a high performance theme, plugin, database, etc. In a model where you pay when something is running. Having it finish sooner reaps real dollars and cents rewards. Think performance that the reader or author can feel in their experience or pocketbook.

High Scalability

Last and certainly not least, the biggest problem with the existing solutions is the terrible expected trade off between visibility and scalability. This is undoubtedely because handling #web-scale stuff is hard. Whether that is web-scale traffic, or #web-scale data. Queue up the Mongo Web Scale video. Having worked on the internet long-enough you quickly realize that very few people have web-scale problems on their site. unless your name is Jeff Bezos or Sundar Pichai

Existing Players

The Heavy Hitters:

New Contenders:

The Old Guard:

Analysis

Here is some cool analysis that I have done on each of the existing players on how they stack up.

Comparision Graphic

Here is a radar graphic.

Here are some thoughts and synthesis on what is there - what I would pick - but how they still come short.

Comparison Grid

BCDE
11111
22222
33333

Conclusion

Last Thoughts

I used to use this very bare-bones service called NearlyFreeSpeech.net and it always got me thinking that the total number of ideas expressed on the internet is limited by how costly it is to publish those thoughts.

What Now ??

I have been thinking about this for a while, and there is nothing that satisfies my wish list.

  • Very Low Cost
  • People First
  • Higly Extendable
  • High Visibility
  • and Modern Assumptions
    • about Security, Plugins, Developers, etc

References:

business
analysis manifesto cms performance

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