Tachyon CMS

A major problem with CMS’ today is that they are very difficult to learn and use. When I started using Joomla, it required a great effort on my part to master it. Creating templates wasn’t that difficult, but creating content for a web site and organizing it wasn’t the easiest task.

I’m not a novice computer user. I’ve been using computers for about 26 years and developing software from almost the beginning. When I started using Joomla, I was an experienced PHP developer and used tools like FrontPage and Dreamweaver to build web sites. With all of this knowledge, I still had a great challenge to make sense of Joomla and to understand it enough to build a CMS web site.

Why are CMS’ so difficult to use? There is plenty of documentation, books, and videos which teach how to use them. Either people don’t use the tutorials, or the software is hard to use. Perhaps its a combination of both. I had to teach every person basic CMS concepts when I created their Joomla site and even then I feel they don’t fully understand how to use the software.

I think one of the problems with CMS technology today is that too much focus is placed on features. CMS’ are competing against each other and they try to take the lead by adding new features to brag about. Very little is done to address the complaints of the many users who can’t use the software to its fullest capacity.

Software should be designed for the end user, not the developer. It should solve the user’s problems and make it easier to accomplish their goals. Apple is very good at creating technology for the masses. CMS developers have a great deal to learn about usability.