Analyzing the short- and long-term objectives for our clients’ projects with reference to their existing platform and assets helps to decide if an Open Source or proprietary CMS is ideal. Evergreen is Cascade’s propriety CMS, and a majority of our projects are built with it. However, our expertise lends itself to other solutions, including Open Source.
We always strive to recommend and build a CMS that’s the best fit for our clients. At cascade web//development, we see our clients as partners and have worked hard to foster a team atmosphere where candidness and trust are highly valued. We guarantee an open door to our clients and build web solutions with the long-term in mind, from the solutions themselves to the relationships behind them.
Below are reasons why we think the evergreen CMS is a good solution for many of our clients.
SUPPORT
When choosing a CMS, it’s important to recognize the level and kind of product support you can expect in the future. We offer direct support for evergreen. Our customers call us and place support requests, and each case is handled with individual attention. Oftentimes, a remedy for one client has positive ripple effects for existing and future clients whose solutions are built on the platform.Troubleshooting with an Open Source CMS tends to rely more on community support. Here, you’re often relying on the response rate and expertise of outside resources.
SECURITY
Security on the web is always crucial. Whether it's from a standpoint of protecting the information entrusted to you by your customers, preventing your site from being used to to mask phishing attacks, or mitigating the risk of the online equivalent of graffiti - your site needs to be protected from top to bottom. While a good developer is familiar with best practices and has experience writing code in a way that stops those problems before they start, developers are still (usually) human. A CMS should help developers by insulating the code from common mistakes by default. Instead of requiring raw code to be written that submits user input directly into to a database - the contents of which could contain malicious instructions meant to do anything from delete existing data to inserting a new username and password - a CMS should offer or even require alternate methods for that data to be submitted that has protections already built in.While the community oriented, crowd sourced nature of Open Source solutions often yield powerful protections through collaboration, they also leave the door open to poorly or non vetted plug-ins that may lack a focus on security - or worse - have built in backdoors. There are definitely no shortages of plug-ins and add-ons for many Open Source systems but do you know and trust the developer of all the plug-ins you're using? The community may judge those tools through industry reviews - which can provide some confidence - but it’s not the same as the guarantee that comes with evergreen, of which we’re held accountable every day.
COST
In most projects, cost is a key factor. It’s important to analyze costs through a short- and long-term lens. A CMS involves more than just a licensing and hosting fee. Indeed, evergreen is more costly than some open source bids our clients encounter. If the budget is extremely lean in the short-term, it may make sense to head down a path with Open Source. However, it’s important to think about the long-term, too. Think about the time, materials and resources that will be required to make updates and tweaks to your site with a solid web partner and support. Will subsequent versions and upgrades and plugins eventually make your Open Source site obsolete? We’ve certainly seen this happen.At the end of the day, one-size-fits-all should not apply when deciding on a CMS. It is imperative to take the time to layout a solid plan with reference to your short- and long-term objectives. This is why at Cascade Web we value Strategy so much. We encourage our clients to invest in Strategy that builds a solid foundation for whatever Solution we arrive at.