Andrew Fox

Maximiser Content Management System is an ongoing project I’ve been working on for the past few months. Maximiser was created because we wanted something that no other off the shelf CMS provides – an interface so easy and uncomplicated to use that even your mother could use it!

When deciding on a method of controlling the back end of your site such as content, admin, file management, users etc there are two choices to be made:

You can either go with an off the shelf package which range in cost from free to £thousands, all of which due to the nature of them being “off the shelf” have to be one size fits all. Usually 75% of the system is not needed for what you are doing so its just an overcomplicated waste, and one that is difficult for your client to get their head around at that!

The second option is to design and build your own, cut out all the crap you don’t need and get a slick easy to use system running to do just what you want.

- Somewhat of a no brainer for us!

I wanted to design Maximiser so that you only needed to know three things before being able to edit any part of your web site.

1)    What does a CMS actually do?
2)    What is the URL to access the CMS?
3)    What is my username and password?

After that point the CMS is so easy to intuitively navigate, find the section of your site you want to edit, make the changes and save.

The main menu in the CMS mimics the menu of the web site it is controlling to keep it understandable. Any other options are shoved neatly at the top, out of the way.

That really is it! Of course it seems simple but in order to make it so simple, quite a bit of work had to go into the design and development of it to ensure its simplicity ; -)

Maximizer currently sits behind a range of web sites from fairly simple informational sites such as www.kelloggs.gr, to a multi media Flash kiosk, to social network sites where it controls a powerful membership system.