By:
Ben Herrington
on Friday, October 30, 2009,
under
website
"Never redesign your site AND install a content management
system at the same time." That's what user experience professionals
have been saying for years, and it's always made sense to me. It's
like trying to build a boat and sail it at the same time.
On the other hand, is that aphorism really practical? I mean, of
the dozen creative redesigns I've done, every one went hand-in-hand
with a new CMS.
- The client needed a new CMS for its advances in technology and
decided what the heck? Let's do a new look & feel, too.
- Or the client needed to freshen its look and decided what the
heck? Let's put it on a new system, too.
So when StoneHenge Partners decided to move to the Umbraco
platform, I wanted to put the aphorism to the test. I gave our
development team this creative direction: Don't change anything.
The result is the website you are looking at right now.
We launched the new Umbraco site this week to very little
fanfare. No champagne bottle on the bow; just a DNS redirect and
the new ship sailed quietly out of the harbor.
So how did it go?
Todd Carter, our tech lead on this project, I think would tell
you it was a breeze. He knew exactly what Ajax scripts, .NET
controls and XSLT macros to code -- just look at the old site.
Dustin Hoffmann, our web designer, on the other hand, I think
would disagree. Compositing XHTML, CSS and graphics into a skin
that matches the old site was just as time-consuming as designing a
new look -- but twice as boring.
On my part, I had to continually resist the urge to change this,
fix that, or redo the other thing. So I would say it was
frustrating.
Was it worth it?
StoneHenge Partners decided to convert to Umbraco as a strategic
move to gain expertise and credibility in a robust, up-and-coming
CMS. Was the conversion worth the effort? Absolutely.
If you've got in-house developers (and we've got terrific ones)
then Umbraco is ten times the CMS Joomla! is. Both are open-source
(read: free), but Umbraco is fully integrated into the .NET
framework. So we can integrate our public site with our intranet
with ease. We can add a clients-only extranet. We can integrate
with back-end systems. The list goes on.
Plus, it's a better admin user interface. I can visualize my
site tree. I can re-arrange pages with a simple drag-and-drop. I
can manage SEO. That list goes on, too.
Still ... I wish we had a new look to go with the new CMS. It
feels like I traded in my dinged up old Taurus on a brand-new
showroom model ... Taurus. (Maybe it's time to talk Mike into a
creative redesign?)