Chapter 1. Do I Even Want an Open Source CMS?
It's a sunny Sunday morning in Miami. Oprah picks up her coffee and settles in her favorite patio chair. She is in a quiet trance-like state. Gazing at kids playing on her left, her expression turns from deep thoughts to confusion to puzzlement.
Oprah Casey is an established Yoga expert. She is just back from her class. She starts thinking about her web site. She has a four-page web site that Mario, a friend, created a decade ago.
Her current web site consists of an introduction on Yoga, her own biography, a testimonial page, and a page with her Yoga center's address and phone numbers. Last time she wanted to add driving directions to the address page, it took her two weeks to get that done. Here's what happened:
- Day 1: Oprah calls Mario and explains what she wants.
- Day 3: She calls again to check if the work is done. Mario had completely forgotten about it. He asked her to email him the driving directions.
- Day 4: Mario tells her he is finding source files of Oprah's web site and the server login/password.
- Day 7: Mario shows a page with the driving directions updated. Oprah suggests a couple of changes.
- Day 9: Oprah is happy with what's on the contact page now. She gives a go-ahead.
- Day 10: Weekend!
- Day 12: Mario says he is uploading on the server.
- Day 14: After another call, Oprah gets confirmation that it's live. She checks and finds it alright.
Oprah is happy that now she will get less calls asking for directions. At the same time, she is annoyed with this whole process of change. She does not want to go through another such ritual for a new change. What if her phone number changed? What if she wanted to update her bio? Or what if she wanted to add another page to her site? She can't afford to wait too long. She does not even want to take favors from her friend anymore!
She grabs a pen and paper and starts scribbling.
Oprah is clear that she can't continue with her current web site and the way it's managed. She needs a complete reorganization of her web site. Oprah wants her web site to have the following features:
- Web site must be easy to manage
Oprah wants her web site to be easily manageable. She can understand technology, but is not a programmer. She wants to manage the web site content on her own. Whether it's adding a paragraph on a page or removing some old information, she wants to do it on her own.
- Web site should be dynamic
She wants the changes that she makes to be reflected immediately. It should be possible to add a new section or link easily. Oprah wants to add photos and Yoga class information. And this should be updated on the web site immediately.
- Other features
There are many other things that Oprah wants such as e-commerce, class booking, better design, and so on. The new web site should allow addition of all these features. If not right now, she wants them in the near future.
Finally, Oprah calls Mario. She politely explains to him the problems and what she wants. She then pauses to hear Mario's reply.