Love Your CMS. (No, Really!)

“Content management system.” The words are simple enough, but what exactly is a CMS? Is it a simple tool for editing a web page in a WYSIWYG box, or a robust system that keeps track of the historical versions of every sentence on the site? Is it a free piece of software you can install in an afternoon, or a massive purchase that involves contracts and licensing fees and schmoozy dinners with salespeople? Does it help you build a sleek responsive site, or does it thwart you at every turn?

Tragically, the answer is that a CMS is, and does, all of these things. CMSes help and hinder; they inspire rapture and incite table-flipping. I’m thrilled to moderate the next ALA: On Air event, where Karen McGrane, Jeff Eaton, and Ryan Irelan will join me to discuss what they love about working in CMSes (administrative UX!), what drives them to frustration (decoupling!), and what meaty problems (integration with design systems!) they hope to dive into next.

Event details

This event is free and everyone is welcome—just sign up to receive the viewing instructions. Here are the details:

Tuesday, August 25
1–2 p.m. EDT
via Google Hangout
Register or get more details

We’ll have 30 minutes of conversation between our panelists, and then open things up to questions from none other than YOU. We’ll also share the full video and transcript after the live show ends.

Join our email list to get updates when new events are announced.

Panelists

• Eileen Webb — Cofounder of web meadow and leader of content strategy workshops
• Karen McGrane — Author of Content Strategy for Mobile and managing partner at Bond Art + Science
• Jeff Eaton — Host of Insert Content Here and digital strategist at Lullabot
• Ryan Irelan — Founder of Mijingo, where he has authored courses on Git, Craft CMS, and ExpressionEngine

Get More CMS Knowledge from Pantheon

Our generous sponsor Pantheon wants you to love your CMS, too. That’s why they’ve created a platform for building, launching, and running Drupal and WordPress sites—all from a single, powerful dashboard.

They’ve also put together a detailed guide to understanding one of the biggest trends in backend dev: the “headless CMS.” Don’t worry, it’s not a spooky story meant to scare off content editors. It’s an approach to decoupling your CMS interface from your front-end experience—and it can help you with everything from redesigning without re-implementing your CMS to finally curing your site of that bad case of div-itis.

Learn more about going headless: how it works, what it takes to set up, and why you might want to try it. See Pantheon’s guide now.

via planetweb

Tweet