CMS
Status: accepted
Deciders: devs, management
Date: 2020-05-25
Context and Problem Statement
island.is will be maintaining and publishing content from many different government agencies and institutions. Their technical skill may vary a great deal, the content skill may also be lacking, therefore it is paramount for the system to be user friendly and intuitive.
Agencies and institutions should have enough autonomy with regards to editing content they are responsible for, to minimise the manual labour required by the island.is editors.
Which CMS system would best suit the needs of island.is?
Decision Drivers
Content needs to be editable by non technical users
Content needs to be accessible across multiple domains and platforms
Setup should be simple for developers new to the project
The system should manage flexible content structures to limit systems impact on design
The system should be user friendly and easy to use for a non technical person
The system needs to offer a suitable workflow option to ease content management once multiple agencies start to contribute
Considered Options
Decision Outcome
Devs narrowed the choice down to two options Contentful and Contentstack.
Both systems meet the required featureset.
A decision from management was made to use Contentful. Contentful is deemed to have a larger presence in the Icelandic dev community. Contentful is also believed to have a stronger funding base. Contentful is already implemented in some of our projects.
Pros and Cons of the Options
Good, because it allows for a great deal of workflow and collaboration features
Good, because it can function as a project management tool for the content
Good, because it can serve as a communication portal between island.is and the various parties involved
Good, because it has comprehensive access control [7],[8]
Bad, because it has a very basic API
Bad, because it has a limited set of CMS features
Bad, because it is not designed to be a publishing platform
Good, because it is kind of a simpler version of Contentful
Good, because it is simple to use for non technical users
Good, because image editing & placement is simple but effective
Good, because it has a built-in CDN for images
Bad, because it doesn't have a write API
Bad, because the only way to import content is through the web interface
Bad, because it doesn't have 'required fields'
Bad, because API is somewhat limited
Good, because it has a best in class API and SDKs
Good, because it has a large ecosystem of users
Good, because it has a hybrid WYSIWYG editor, where you mix content types together with regular rich text content
Good, because it is generic enough to be used for many different things
Good, because it has a write-API, so you can create content programmatically
Good, because it can be extended with UI extensions and various 3rd party tools
Good, because it has rich access controls
Good, because it a lot of developers have experience with it
Good, because it has a built-in CDN for images and content
Good, because it can define workflows and apply user permissions across those
Bad, because it has a very generic structure and can be confusing for new users
Bad, because depending on how content is set up, you may often have to do deep drill-downs on content entries
Bad, because it has a complex billing structure making it harder to project costs
Good, because it is somewhat structured compared to some of the other choices
Good, because it has an SDK for many languages
Good, because it is generic enough to be used for many different things
Good, because it has a write-API, so you can create content programmatically
Good, because it can be extended with widgets and various 3rd party tools
Good, because it has a built-in CDN for images and content
Good, because it has rich access controls
Good, because it can define workflows and apply user permissions across those
Good, because it has a easy to understand billing structure
Bad, because fewer developers have experience with it
Bad, because it has a steep initial price
Good, because you have endless control over these types of systems
Good, because there's a huge ecosystem of pre-built stuff
Bad, because the huge ecosystem has a huge quality control problem
Bad, because you will need specialised knowledge of these systems to maintain them and get out of them what you want.
Bad, because you will have to host them yourself, take care of backups and maintenance and there are regular serious security breaches with these systems.
Bad, because even though they can be run in headless mode, their UIs and APIs are not really geared towards headless usage.
Good, because you have endless control over these types of systems
Good, because there's a huge ecosystem of pre-built stuff
Good, because it has a write-API, so you can create content programmatically
Bad, because you will need specialised knowledge of these systems to maintain them and get out of them what you want.
Bad, because you will have to host them yourself, take care of backups and maintenance and there are regular serious security breaches with these systems.
Bad, because the system is missing features deemed critical such as content internationalization and granular access control
Good, because it manages workflows
Bad, because it's built around Gov UK and we would have to fork the project to use it safely
Bad, a lot of upfront work would be required to adapt the system to our stack
Bad, because it does not fulfill the project's requirements
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