everybody wants a drupal

Or at least - everybody *should*.

It amazes me to see how many small businesses are still paying for web designers to put together static content sites for them. Sure, I can see it from the designer's pocketbook point of view - everytime the business owner wants a page updated, the designer gets to hit them with a fee. But CMS systems are so robust and easy to use now that the idealistic side of me says that everybody should get a CMS to call their own.

For example, I see local designers in my area charging several hundred dollars for static sites with predefined "pages". So, if you want a 3 page website, you're going to pay this much. C'mon people - the nineties are over!

Once you can get your mind wrapped around a good CMS system (like Drupal), and you've had some experience customizing it, tweaking it, and learning its little quirks and bugs, why not offer this as a solution for business owners? Do you really want to be on the receiving end when you get a picky customer who is going to call you every week so that they can change their "about" page? Can you truly justify charging them a fee to edit a few lines of code? Would you prefer that non-savvy non-HTML business owners try and wade through your code so that they can change an email address or something, and end up mucking everything up? Maybe you would, if you're now calculating what you would charge to "fix" a website for them.

I think that our job as designers and webmasters means more than managing other people's content. We should be creating websites that serve as more than just a static digital advertisement. Give your clients the ability to login and change the little things - like their content. Why are these features always reserved for corporate clients? Are CMS-based systems that hard to learn for some designers? Is that why so-called designers are still designing what are essentially boring "web brochures"?

Instead, create a site with a strong backbone focused on usability and complement it with a meaningful design. Use a CMS system to add functionality and save yourself time by not reinventing the wheel every time you need to build a site. Give the client the tools to manage their own content. Doesn't that make more sense?

If you're worried about missing out on reoccurring income from a CMS-based site, have no fear! There's always some new feature sitting around the corner that your client wants to load, and you never know when Drupal needs a security update. I'd also be willing to bet that no CMS-based site is unbreakable, and you may still have the chance to charge that bundle for "fixing" little things that get messed up by the users.