Times they are a changin'...
At one point the web was ruled by developers who created custom web designs and content management systems (CMS) that weren’t exactly friendly to the wallets of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Today, however, the explosion of open source software has also exploded into the world of CMS and designers and developers have had to navigate their way through this rather seismic shift in the industry. Even Fortune 500 companies can be seen using open source CMS systems like Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress.
So with this more broad acceptance, we sought out the opinions of other web professionals to get their opinions on how the proliferation of open source has changed how they do business, or how it hasn’t. For Hunter Willis of www.amnet.net open source has allowed him to add “web design” as another profitable service to offer his web marketing clients. “I'm able to sell a "start-up websites" where the customer chooses from a menu of pre-selected options and have a fully-functional website in a matter of days,” said Willis. “What's great is I'm able to outsource these websites and still turn a nice profit. They provide me with extra pocket money during these lean times.”
Membership = privileges
For some companies, embracing open source technology has allowed them to expand their offerings while also opening them up to a collaborative and mutually beneficial development community. Mediacurrent Designs from Atlanta is one such firm. “At Mediacurrent, the Drupal movement has enabled us to build a web design firm entirely around open-source technologies,” says Mediacurrent Vice President of Client Services Dave Terry. “Our development process includes being part of an international community that offers unlimited access to resources within the Drupal ecosystem. As a result, we work in a highly collaborative manner. The benefits have been amazing and tremendously rewarding. For instance, we oftentimes contribute code and new features back to the Drupal project.”
Even the older kids are doing it!
While it would be easy to assume that designers and developers that have been making their living doing html for the past two decades would resent the intrusion of CMS that’s not always the case. Some of these organizations have found ways to streamline their processes or build their businesses around their strengths while leveraging the strengths of open source platforms. Caroline de Gruchy is one such web pro that has found adaptation to be advantageous to her bottom line, “I have been designing websites since 1993. My background was in writing, editing and multimedia. HTML was easy to learn and competition was scarce. Over the years all that changed and buyers wanted more and more bells and whistles that required programming skills… open source CMS have actually made it possible for me to focus again on content, leaving the code to (in my case) Wordpress fans.” And while de Gruchy admits that open source has worked out to her benefit, it’s not all candy and rainbows. “[The] downside of course is that customers know they can create cheap websites themselves so they are eager for reduced prices. The response has to be that my skill is in developing navigation structures, content, and usability; helping them make better decisions about their corporate online presence, and keep up-to-date with technical trends.”
Finding your personal glass slipper
Some shops were leery to change their process to work with open source platforms, which in the early days seemed inadequate to many designers. Erik Wolf found most of the early open source offerings to be too limited, until he found Wordpress a few years ago. They preferred to use their own proprietary system, but over time found that client requests for plugins and additions became cumbersome to update. According to Wolf, “With the release of WordPress 2.7 a few months later, we decided to become a 100% WordPress shop which definitely forced us to rethink some of our processes on the development side and also rethink how we had structured our development team. We now needed some slightly different skill sets and where it had been OK in the past for developers building static sites to organize their site files however they were most comfortable, we were now in a position where we had to dictate more clearly how we wanted themes to be structured so we would be able to more easily support them down the line.”
“But although doing all of our content management through WordPress forced us to rethink and restructure much of our development process, it also simplified things a great deal because we were now able to apply just one development process for ALL of our sites rather than having one set of rules for static sites and one for content management.“ From the people we talked to, Drupal seems to be the most popular CMS, and to be honest, it’s the one we use most often here at Nicholas Creative – if you check out our portfolio you’ll see that a lot of our work is Drupal based with a splash of Wordpress. Developing an expertise and refining your development process to fit the CMS, as Erik Wolf mentioned, seems to be paramount to success for firms that latch onto a specific platform. Ben Bradley of Macon Raine sees the specialization as an opportunity to focus on more important issues than the technology, “We spend less time discussing technology features and more time thinking about intelligent ways to use them. It also means that content is now the primary conversation. Clients want to spend more time talking about strategy, conversion and content and less time in the weeds talking about technical features.” Art Williams of Digett, a Drupal shop in Boerne, Texas also touts the advantages of specializing in a single open source CMS, “If a web design business will pick one CMS and get behind it with all of their effort then they can own the niche and begin to truly leverage the advantages of a CMS like Drupal. We can speak to how Drupal has affected our design process, pricing model, and why Drupal is superior to the other platforms for a high end web design firm. “
The drawbacks (this isn't an infomercial...there are negatives)
But for all of the positive feedback we received on how companies had adapted and in many cases thrived from the use of open source, there were some legitimate concerns voiced as well. In particular, issues related to letting small businesses (with little to no design or marketing knowledge) manage their own content. While Marianne Carlson of Emcie admits that open source CMS has been a benefit to small businesses who may not have previously been able to afford one, they can be disappointed in the results. She pointed out, “Unless their content is managed by someone who is a talented and experienced marketer, the results are usually pretty disappointing. Most of my clients have been there and done that, and now they are looking for a website that really markets their business. What I can accomplish as a custom designer is valuable.” So what do you think? How has open source CMS changed your business/the entire industry? Please feel free to share your comments.