Usability
Features of ideal site- Breadcrumbs (so you know where you are)
- Sitewide search
- Friendly URLS (like \foobar\baking-instructions\ instead of \foobar\node\?q=6)
- (Interestingly, Alertbox has unfriendly URLs.)
- Categories and tags for classifying information
- Categories are more structured than tags
- But even tags, ideally, can be structured in some way (so you don't end up with redundant tags like "music_old" and "music-old" and "oldmusic")
- A good, dynamically generated sitemap
- A CSS-based design that optimally:
- Is lightweight enough to be fast
- Puts content close to the top of the HTML page, for search-engine purposes
- Degrades well for old browsers
- Works on mobile devices
- Works with a screen reader
- Provides a print-friendly format
- Comments
Usability resourcesCSS tips and guidelinesResourcesHTML5 |
General CMS requirements
Desirable features (apart from end-user features):- WYSIWYG editing
- Image uploading
- Document uploading
- Speed (both for the end user and for the content creator)
- Requires some method of caching static HTML pages
- Relative ease of installation
- Ease of customization (colors, graphics, and layout)
- Stability
- In operation
- Over time (i.e., sufficient user base and support)
- Full-site backup and restore
- Standards compliance
- Low (i.e., zero) cost
- Good reporting tools
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Spam-defense system for comments
- Spell-checking
Other features to consider- Ability to easily generate printed analog to site
- Wikipedia has this feature in development
- Ability to integrate outside content and gadgets
- Google Sites has special functionality for integrating other Google things (video, docs, iGoogle gadgets)
(The mezzoblue/blueprint.css guy had a similar wishlist in 2004. He ended up with Movable Type.)
Search-engine optimization (SEO)ResourcesSite-speed optimization Resources |
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