This (EE and Content Management Systems) is really the prequel (okay, the pre-prequel) to the earlier EE and the Multiplier Effect.
Get the new piece, EE and Content Management Systems, here.
In it, I summarize brilliantly the entire history of software development and offer the best definition of content management systems ever articulated by far. All this while I continue to display my remarkable humility.
Seriously, I hope this will be helpful to the community. It’s ‘open sourced’ as before, I will put up a .zip soon with the editable files for those who want to adjust/extend what I’ve done.
Here is how I see the piece fitting in with some currently on my radar:
EE and content management (this)
EE: the first ‘interesting’ CMS (next)
EE and the multiplier effect (previously)
EE and the product pricing equation (like the delivery of EE 2.0 was ... someday)
Think of the pieces as sequenced answers to questions:
What is a CMS?
How does the EE CMS compare to other products and especially to WordPress?
What is the productivity and delivery experience of web professionals who have committed themselves to EE?
How do EE 2.X plus crucial addons ‘play together’ when pricing projects?
As for the next one, recall the famous comments that the original Mac was the first computer to fail in an ‘interesting way’, or alternatively, was the first computer interesting enough to fail.
EE 2.X is surely working through amazing growing pains, both foreseen and unforeseen, but it remains the first interesting CMS ever developed. And it isn’t nearly so awful as was the Mac Performa/LC. As for WordPress, it’s genuinely awesome, but it falls in the transition area between older ‘content managers’ and a true CMS like EE. WordPress is interesting (in my sense) for its open-sourced ecology, not for its architecture.
(psst ... to see what I mean by that, read ‘EE and content management’).
... To show why EE is so interesting and compare it usefully to WordPress, I’ll take an illustrative look at custom fields.
Yes, I know. Who isn’t sick of comparing WP and EE? Even worse is trying to define ‘content management systems’. Borring. But I think any useful, extensive set of technical marketing pieces for EE has to lay the needed groundwork.
And, jokes aside (’‘EE and content management” is a running, serious joke as you’ll notice when reading), I am very glad to change/improve this piece, and the earlier one, based on your constructive criticisms and experiences with clients.