by Jeffrey Mihalich

Taking the way-back machine to the early days of the web where hand-coded pages were the only way to publish a website, technical skill was a must.

In the late 1990's WYSIWYG web design tools became available. While not tied to dynamic content, these static HTML generation tools were the first iterations of Content Management Systems. GoLive CyberStudio (1996), Macromedia Dreamweaver (1997) and SoftQuad HoTMetaL, were some of the first tools to allow non-IT folk to build web pages. These tools were inexpensive and opened up web development to a large audience.

At the same time companies like Vignette, Documentum and Interwoven started to compile software which would become the basis of the first CMS systems. These systems were costly and required a high level of skill. Only larger organizations were impacted by these early CMS systems due to the steep cost of entry.

Over the years the CMS space filled with a myriad of competition from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Adobe and lots of smaller competitors. Many of these systems were robust, complete, database-driven systems offering a full set of features.

Even with lower cost system, and better usability companies had a difficult time balancing IT and marketing issues and ended up with a large investment and ongoing support issues.

While the web went through growing pains, so did CMS's and web technologies. The open source community delivered technologies such as Apache webserver, PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby programming languages. They also delivered open source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL. On the commercial front businesses were transitioning from Coldfusion and ASP to Microsoft .NET and Java. This all meant more choices for the backend development, but what about the designers and non-technical staff?

Many large and mid-size businesses were building their own CMS's. These filled the needs of designers and content creators without the high cost of licensing and external support. Keeping these system documented and updated introduced long-term support problems.

Fast forward to today and we see many CMS options that are easy to use, low cost and readily available.
These systems keep upfront investment down, while allowing customization when needed. Even Microsoft dropped it's proprietary blogging solution in favor of the open source WordPress.

The large community that use these tools every day not only push innovation for their own purposes, but continue to pressure the large CMS providers of today. Much of the technology that they provided is readily available for little or no cost. Many hosting companies offer pre-installed and configured versions of WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, PHPBB and many others. This opens up a new level of website complexity to non-techs and small businesses. These CMS's offer many free templates through the community, and inexpensive templates are available for sale.

With HTML 5, mobile apps and better web technologies on the horizon, the hand-coded pages of the past are being replaced with robust WYSIWYG toolsets enabling rapid page development and feature-rich sites at low cost.

Akin to the the digital photography revolution that started in the mid 1990's, which changed the professional photography profession. Stock photography and cheap digital cameras made photographs a commodity. The expensive CMS's will go away and be replaced with inexpensive alternatives. The high priced custom website development projects will also fade into the distance and we will see the commoditization of sites and software. The knowledge behind making them work for your business will not go away.