Essential features of a CMS

Part of my job entails that I summarize parts of web development into client lingo. The other day I had to come up with a list of basic requirements for a CMS that will be built for the client by their internal IT department. Here’s what I came up with:

• Basic text editor
• Add pages, edit existing pages and delete pages
• Multiple templates for different kinds of pages
• Print pages and also export pages to .pdf format
• Ability to ‘archive’ content
• RSS publishing (so that other sites can publish your content)
• Upload, reference and store files (.doc, .pdf, etc)
• Add, edit, disable and delete menu links
• Automated site map of your web pages for search engine optimization
• Meta data management for search engine optimization
• Ability to create simple online forms and polls to collect information
• Contact form(s)
• Workflow capability for content approval (ie. draft)
• Automated logs changes and edits (versioning)
• Backup capability
• Online help documentation
• Website statistics
• Search function

Disclaimer: Of course, Drupal handles most of these things but Open Source isn’t always an option

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 9:25 pm and is filed under dev, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.