[article] 5 hidden costs of running a cms

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/biz/the-5-hidden-costs-of-running-a-cms

As I read this article I recognized that MODx is very cost efficient for our clients. MODx’s strengths addresses most of the points that are considered hidden costs in the article:

1. The cost of training -> MODx is easy to use so training is fast so this cost is reduced.

2. The cost to quality -> The author is referring to content quality not the quality of the CMS. And the criteria is content control and workflow. This process can be reproduced in MODx with different user groups with different permissions and some other ’trickery’ but it is not a 100% managed workflow. However I did not identify this as being a cost related issue, it could hinder the quality of the content but not if the staff is efficient.

3. The cost to functionality -> MODx saves money here since basically anyone can code a snippet. The coding learning curve is very low.

4. The cost of redundancy and flexibility -> Well, do I even need to mention MODx’s flexibility. And the separation of core and add-ons keeps it slim, no bloating with unused tools.

5. The cost of commitment -> this cost is identified as being the cost of the actual content. Not really sure I understand how this cost. I guess that as long as you have backups the data is safe. I would argue that this might be a hosting issues rather than a cms cost.

Anyway, bottom line: use MODx, it saves you money! Add this to the reasons your clients should be happy to use MODx on their sites

The third part of "the cost of commitment" isn’t a big problem with MODx, you can export your pages as static HTML.

There is some cost in the overhead of using documents to store and display the data. For example, you’re storing and retrieving published and unpublished date, createdon, createdby, etc. whether you need them or not although, as sottwell suggests, exporting to static HTML makes that go away. Also, I wouldn’t call it a "hidden" cost.

I was referring to this statement:

The third area can be particularly tricky. Once your content is in a content management system it is not always a simple matter to get it out.

I guess how easy it is to get it out will depend on the format you want. In my pov I was considering a database dump a way to get the content or data. This will work well for me but may not be suited for a non-tech.

And of course that presupposes that you’d want to abandon your CMS which, in the case of MODx, could never, ever happen.

Actually, I did use the feature once, I used it to create a website on my local host, then exported the static pages for uploading to a site that didn’t have php, let alone a database. It made it much easier to manage the site (for me, at least). The site owner would send me new content, and I’d add it to my MODx installation, export and upload again. Menus and all done for me. Sort of a poor man’s (or woman’s) version of Dreamweaver, I guess.