Mockup of content management system

While using the couch content management system was reasonably simple to install and use, it is important to consider that a fully editable site would include its own content management system. Therefore this was the reasoning behind researching what good content management systems looked like. The influences of the interface design can be seen here;

After this stage I went on to create wireframes based upon my research, you can see these here;

Finally, I created actual designs of my content management system, you can see this here;

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CMS Design

The website is designed to be a template to have a content management which would allow the website manager to swap all the content within the site to match the new exhibition. Below examples of what content management systems currently look like, as part of my research into content management system.

Things I need to remember from my research:

- Will it allow the user to add html tags
 - Colour selection
 - Background Image
 - Title font
 - Content font
 - iPhone/Android homescreen icon
 - Favicon
 - Not assume how much content is to be inserted.
 - Add instructions for content editors
- SEO
- Statistics
- Media
 - Add/remove pages

From my research it would appear that CMS design isn’t important because it isn’t being seen by the user. But a well designed CMS can make changing a websites content much easier.

The most commonly used CMS is WordPress, it tries the hardest to be visually appealing. The other two, concrete 5 and radiant are functionality based and design falls behind that.

It would be interesting to create a visually appealing CMS that allows the user to visualise what they are editing.

References;
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/designing-for-content-management-systems/
http://webdesignledger.com/10-best-content-management-systems-for-designers
http://www.concrete5.org/