Recently I've been working with a local not for profit organization. Early on in my meetings with them it was discussed that they needed a new website. I offered my services and suggestions through numerous emails and lunch meetings. At then end of that initial run I had suggested a new website using one of a number of Content Management Systems (CMS) available on the market. The organization members at that last meeting thanked me and stated that they had someone volunteer to design, code, and host a solution for them. "Great," I thought, "less work for me to do."
It was in my next coorespondance with this group that made me a little nervous about their choice. It turned out that the volunteer was actually selling his services as a design group and host provider. We discussed his proposed solution and I pointed out some of the limitations that I thought would hurt this particular venture. The designer assured me that he had a custom designed, home grown application that would be perfect for them, and promptly pushed me aside.
At this point I was shaken, but not down for the count. I tried one last time to urge the organization to reconsider their choice and reevaluate their options on the proposed solution. Again, I was ignored and the project began under my objections.
I continued to weigh in from time to time, as I had more interest in the organization as a whole, not just their web presence. The provider took 6 months to deliver his turn key product, and as I feared it is lacking basic functionality. What makes things worse is that the organization has asked if I would volunteer to maintain their site for them, since they believe all it is lacking is basic content. As a web professional I know that much more is needed.
My initial questions to the provider upon taking over site administration has led me to discover that you can't actually add pages to the site. Let me say that again, in this custom Content Management System you can't add pages! Wouldn't that be a basic feature for any Content Management System, light weight or otherwise? I would think that would be a requirement. What are users to do when new information is to be published? Do existing pages just grow exponentially? That seems a bit ridiculous to me.
My next gripe is the lack of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities. Pages, as they exist today do not contain any meta tags... at all. No keywords. No descriptions. There are no heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) of any kind. There isn't a single page that contains valid markup, even though each page is listed as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. When I asked the provider to grant me FTP and database access he questioned the need, the purpose. The need, quite simply, is to fix your lame CMS for you.
The "blog" is simply a link to BlogSpot, for goodness sakes!
Am I wrong? Would you be happy with a CMS with so few and lacking features? What should I do? Should I continue to fight the ignorant provider, or should I break down and port the site to a more feature rich (basic, even) CMS? Let me hear your thoughts, readers and fellow bloggers.