They say: if you want to save money you should never go shopping when you are hungry, but you should always first write a list, otherwise you will be tempted to buy things you do not need. The same principle applies when it comes to choosing a content management system, otherwise you end up buying an  enterprise system for tens of thousands of dollars, when a free tool would have done the same.

How can we now establish the list of requirements? Although the situation varies, there are at least ten things to take in particular account:

1. Central feature

When most people think of a CMS they usually think about creation, deletion, editing and organization of the pages. Everybody assumes that any content management system will have this feature, however this is not necessarily true, and even when it is, is not always guaranteed an intuitive method.

Not all platforms, for example, allow you to manage and organize the pages into a hierarchical tree, often individuals' post is organized automatically according to criteria such as date or category. In some cases this is not a problem, because this limitation of functionality keeps the interface simple and easy to understand. However, in other circumstances, the lack of this feature can be frustrating. Is necessary to consider carefully the basic functionality necessary for your purposes, not only in relation to needs, but especially in view of future developments, you should generally be wary of any system that does not allow you to manage this basic functionality. Another thing that you should consider is how easily you can complete these tasks. There are literally thousands of content management systems on the market, most of which offer basic functionality, however they vary greatly in usability criteria. For this we should always test the usability of a system before purchasing it.

2 The editor

Most content management systems have a WYSIWYG editor. Strangely this editor is often not taken into account, despite being the most used function of the system. The editor is the interface through which the content is added and modified. Traditionally, this allowed the basic formatting: font selection, color, fonts, etc. ... But more recently we tried to move from this to something that reflects the principles of best practice.
The danger represented by the traditional WYSIWYG editor has two faces. First, they give control to the content provider in the design. Secondly, in order to achieve this level of control over the design a CMS mix design and content. The new generation of editors, however, takes a different approach. The content provider uses the editor to markup titles, lists, links and other elements without defining the appearance.
Plone CMS is an extremely powerful and completely free tool, which KUPU WYSIWYG editor by default. Kupu allows, for example, a great flexibility in customization and is simple to use even for less experienced users, you can also, thanks to some added tools, decide which part of a page leave editable and which to exclude from the process.
Make sure therefore that your list of requirements includes an editor that uses this approach. Always look for a convenient editor that allows you to replace it within a more appropriate time, in addition chose one that will be able to handle external activities, including pictures and download. And so we moved to the third point.

3 Managing activities

Managing images and files is the weak point of many CMS packages. Problems of access and usability can cause frustration if a system is badly designed. The images, in particular, can cause problems. Make sure the content management system you've selected forces the content giving the chance to add alt attributes to images. You may also want a CMS that provides tools for editing an image such as the basic cropping, resizing and rotating. However, finding this in a CMS can be a real challenge to which Kupu and Plone are trying to remedy. You must then consider the manner in which a CMS manages the uploading PDF, word and similar files, and how it shall attach them? Can description be added to the file, and will this be "searchable"? For the management of images, Kupu, allows inclusion of captions, anchor with the names, automatic resizing, inserting Flash video or other types of embedded videos (for example those YouTube), this and other characteristics led him to be the best product for graphic editing HTML in a CMS. Plone 3.0, is also able to index the full text documents in Word or PDF format type that you upload to the site. Is possible, in addition, to index other file types by installing the add-on products.

4 Search

Research is an important aspect of any site. About half of users will use it regularly. However, this feature is often insufficient. Follow these tips to try to assess whether the search functionality is appropriate:

* Freshness - How often the search engine indexes your site? This is especially important if your site changes regularly.
* Completeness - Does it Indexe the entire contents of each page? What about the attached files?
* Speed - Some search engines may need time to return the results, especially in large sites
* Scope - You can limit the scope of the search to a particular section or refine your search results?
* Ranking - What about the ranking of the results? Is it customizable?
* Personalization - You can control how the results are returned and customize the design?

Some CMS like Plone, solve these problems with the addition of specially designed instruments. Plone runs the search function and provides excellent results with every kind of document. Plone 3 is the best CMS regarding SEO techniques and the indexing of content and also allows the use of add-on for its optimization such as qSEOptimizer. Even without it, Plone provides a series of build-in applications that solve the problem.

5 Personalization

The issue of customization goes far beyond the search function. Some content management systems do not allow customization, forcing the visual aspect. The presentation of the contents should not be dictated by technology, especially when there are techniques for the separation of structure and content. Unfortunately, as a web designer, many providers of content management have failed to adopt best practices and their systems produce horrors, and this poses unreasonable constraints on the design and has a serious impact on accessibility. Normally, this flexibility is necessary. Can we for example, follow a reverse chronological order? You can view events on a calendar? Is it possible to extract the last comment and view all them on the home page? It is the flexibility that emphasizes a CMS to another, and in this area Plone CMS, as Open Source, is the most flexible. Plone 3 allows the customization of every part and thanks to its build-in tools and add-on has a solution for every requirement.

6 The interaction with the user

If you intend to collect feedback from users, the CMS must also provide this functionality, maybe using a plug-in tool. Similarly, if you want to create a community on your site will require features such as chat, forums, comments and ratings. As a minimum we will require the ability to collect and publish comments. Is this process simple with the CMS in question? Does customize fields require technical expertise? Can you specify who will the answers be sent to? Can this information be written in a database or extracted as Excel document? Consider also what features your CMS offers in interacting with customers. Can you send newsletters? Can the recipients be organized into groups? How do RSS feeds work?
Finally, consider how you want to manage users. Will you be able to manage passwords and set permissions and privileges? Will you need to export user's information to other systems? But it is not only the user that requires the authorization of management, should this autorization apply also to those who edit the site? From this point of view the Plone workflow gives you a full match of intent. Plone 3 allows you to manage multiple roles and manage the versioning stepper (which will be discussed shortly) by choosing between versions preferred by the administrator. In Plone 3 are offered a series of new workflow, each of them has unique characteristics. It is possible to combine these different workflow, or you can use the CMFPlacefulWorkflow to assign different workflows to different folders. This makes it very easy to create a site that has a section displayed to anonymous users and a rich collaborative and private space.

7 Roles and permissions

As the number of content providers increases, you might want more control over it. For example, personnel should be able to post job announcements, but not add content to the page. This requires a management system that supports permissions.
You may wish to choose a person to review the content and send it only after having guaranteed the accuracy and consistency of tone. Alternatively, you might want to supervise a junior member with a senior member. In both cases this requires that the CMS supports roles more easily.
Finally, complex companies may require complex workflows with a significant number of checkpoints, this normally requires the ability to return to previous versions of pages.

8 Versioning

Being able to return to a previous version of a page allows you to quickly recover the errors. Some content management systems do not allow you to choose the date of the version you want to return. In Plone3 this is very developed, it allows you to control all the changes implemented step by step and to eliminate them as you wish. The same can be said about multi-site support.

9 Support multiple sites

Although currently there is no need to run more than one site, this is one of those features that you can soon need. With the growth of new technologies, for example, you may need a specific site for the web mobile. The multi-site management is something essential. Another feature that you can not miss is the multilingual support. With Lineage, Plone allows a simple management of multiple sites from a single parent site. Each site can have a look personalized, resulting in every detail as a single site, and totally independent, but all the sites child can be managed, in the settings and content, from a single parent site saving time and complexity.

10 Multilingual support

It's easy to dismiss the need of multilingualism, however, this possibility should never be excluded, even when the reasons seem irrefutable. Be able in future to add new languages allows a large degree of competition. Plone 3 supports over 45 languages, which allows you to be informed if you want to explore new markets. In addition to traditional languages Plone provides leftist and iconographic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Conclusions

The range of features articulated is an important part of the process of selecting a CMS, but is not the only aspect. It is also important to consider issues such as licensing, support, accessibility, safety, training and much more. However, more importantly, do not let your list of features becomes a wish list but a list of your real needs and requirements that may develop in the future.