Designing for Content Management Systems

Filed under CMS , Web Design

Recently, an opportunity to spruce up a web site that happened to be managed within a content management system became a frustrating experience.

The client is a municipality with about 500,000 people that live, work and play there. This city offers many services and information through it's web site. In fact the web site is one of the richest in content that my company has been involved with.

So why has this experience become a bit frustrating? There are two basic problems with the citie's system.

One is the administration of the system. This problem will have to be dealt with sooner than not and there will be another post on this solution coming soon.

The other problem that will be discussed here is the actual graphical design and layout of the web site template.

Now understanding the basics in web design there are a few good guidelines to follow. Here's a small list of these guidelines:

• Keep important information above the fold. (The field of view on the screen that can be seen without being scrolled)
• 3 click rule to getting to information.
  • a user shouldn't have to click more than three times to the information they need
• Large graphics should be avoided to speed the load time of the web page
• Don't put unncecessary items on your page just to look cool
• Avoid hiding content only to be revealed with a javascript or other script to show the content
• Avoid Flash 
• Make the content the number one priority (That's why visitors come to your site)
• Promote social networking

Again, these are just a few guidelines with the emphasis that these are guidelines.

Now getting back to the design problem of this municipal web site, the web site's front page is arguably appealing.

The designer chose to use blue and gray hues throughout the site. This causes problems for those updating the site, because most of the content was originally produced on a white background. So, for example, now you see logos that are supposed to be seamless or blend in with the background, now have a white box around them. This breaks up the page too much and it breaks the continuity of the content.

The next problem is that the designer chose to make the front page with fixed height regions, not allowing for web editors to insert content on the front page that is more than 300 pixels in height. This is very problematic when the templates header takes about 350 pixels of real estate. Some front pages need expanding dividers to facilitate the introduction of that department.

The third problem is the implementation of round corners in the design. Now the idea of round corners in design isn't new and the round corners in and of themselves isn't the problem. It's the way the designer forces the content editors to use round cornered graphics within their front pages.

With only three basic prolems, it would seem that in order to keep the content as the priority, that the administrators and designers of this system would want to make it easy to update. The solution is quite simple and would make updating the pages easier while maintaining asethetics.

The Solution

First, make the content area expandable. Sometimes the three click rule shouldn't apply, especially when a user has to do three clicks just to get to your organization's department page. Sometimes the information has to be displayed right up front.

This offers the people doing the updates a lot of flexibility.

Don't force a non-designer to make design decisions with their content, such as making graphics with round corners, on a non-designer. In a CMS, users, for the most part, are just average people who know how to use document software and just want to put information on the web site. without considering design.

Provide white content areas so that the user doesn't have to reformat text and images to facilitate another color.

As someone who has both used and developed enterprise Content Management Systems, it's a very good thing when the designer considers the people doing the updates in the management and design of the cms.

After all, users have other jobs to do other than designing their articles around your design.

Users do not want complicated interfaces in order to simply post information. It should be as easy as using a word processor like MS Word or the like.

Searchability

  Content Management Systems do a good job at helping users to organize the articles; however, some CMS don't even account for a user to quickly find and edit their content. This is where a good CMS could stand out.