As part of our larger engagements, we will work with our clients to select the appropriate content management system (CMS) for their unique situation. Many of our clients need to fulfill the requirement of implementing decentralized content updating for their entire site. We offer our experience and expertise in this area. Other times, the company or university has already selected a CMS and we are asked to implement it. If a CMS is not selected in advance then we will partner with them to identity one. The process is outlined below but varies depending on our relationship.

In order to identify the CMS that is right for you, Donoughe Design can coordinate with the leading content management products and can assist in recommending a CMS that both fits within the project’s budgetary guidelines and addresses the identified needs of the company’s content contributors. We accomplish this by first measuring each product against a list of criteria developed in conjunction with the client. Each product vendor is asked to present its case for selection. The products are then evaluated based on their ability to address the criteria list. The results of this survey are presented in detail and serve as the guideline for narrowing the field to the most viable products for the company. Finally, this narrowed field will be given the chance to demonstrate their product’s strengths. Sometimes we will provide HTML for the vendor, so that they can demo the site with the new site design. This is good opportunity for content contributors to evaluate the product in a hands-on, realistic situation.

Process Overview
Typical process is listed below used to evaluate CMS for clients:
Define Technology & Accessibility Requirements
Determine CMS selection criteria
Technology/CMS Recommendation
Technology/CMS Platform

Examples of Work
Many of our sites have been developed using a wide variety of CMS. Some sites, such as Ariba were built using a custom CMS.