Hi Ed,

Glad you found WebGUI. As a relative newcomer to the community (my company has been using WebGUI for about 2 yrs whereas some community members have been here for almost 7yrs), I'll try to answer your questions from our point of view as a custom applications development shop.

Have been searching for a CMS and found WEBGUI. So far, I am very impressed. I am evaluating several alternatives and am seriously considering CMS as the solution to many of our clients needs, which is a departure from the traditional approaches.

What do you mean by "traditional approaches"? Custom code? Static HTML? Dreamweaver? Just curious.

Could anyone please give an opinion as to what WEBGUI would NOT be good at or what it's weaknesses are? I would like to be as informed as possible before making any decisions that would have long term consequences.

I tend to agree with your assessment that WebGUI is a bit overkill for small sites. There will be some in the community who will disagree, but we're finding that some clients are better off with fewer options than what WebGUI offers. In fact, I have a support ticket in my queue today where a client enabled a feature in the backend (e-commerce) which has confused them. There are ways to disable some features to limit this effect. We've tended to give full access to all features for our clients which is not always a good thing as it gives them too much rope (with which they can hang themselves).

As for other places where WebGUI is not ideal, you need to be aware that the goal of the software is to offer a fully integrated set of advanced Web features. This means that trade-off's are made in offering a wide vs a deep set of features. The practical implication here is that each of WebGUI's features can do somewhere between 60-80% of what a dedicated application can provide. Of course, some features are more comprehensive than others.

In particular, I tend to shy away from using WebGUI for eCommerce. The API was recently refactored in v7.5 which will help to improve it over time but there are limited features compared to established storefronts such as CS-Cart or OS Commerce. The checkout process is not straight-forward and there are limited gateways. We have used it for a recent client who needed a custom-built checkout process but it was a significant challenge. Alternatively, we have integrated both PayPal and Google checkout for single item purchases and have installed a digital download product called DLGuard for payment processing and expiring links. These solutions can be easier to manage and less expensive for clients with limited products and sales.

Otherwise, WebGUI makes a great general purpose solution which is perfect for shops like ours where we can customize it to meet individual client and business needs. BTW, there is a project underway now that is refactoring the nearly 300 templates to make these more designer-friendly and easier to skin.

For example, I have looked at many of the sample sites and sightings, and see no mention of 'real estate' type sites where properties are listed and can be searched, or sites that have inventories of product for sale, but I see all the hooks there as though they could be easily handled as in Ecommerce.

Check out the Find a Doctor section at Midwest Heart Specialists. This site is implemented in WebGUI and uses a database of doctors and nurses that runs on a separate server. This isn't real estate listings but I think you can get the idea. As of WebGUI 7.5, there is a new feature with the unfortunate name of Thingy. It's the beginnings of a solution to provide quick & easy management of online databases. You can see an implementation of it at this web site which has a listing of projects that are maintained via Thingy. The project list and details pages are SQL Reports as Thingy has very limited reporting capabilities right now.

Hopefully Tiffany will respond to your post with some of her client sites that she runs. She probably has the most e-commerce clients of anyone I know who provides WebGUI solutions. At least one of her sites offers a storefront interface that you'd see at Target.com. There is also a new asset in 7.5 or 7.6 called Shelves which can group products. I haven't used it.

Additionally, as far as scoping is concerned, my first impression is that WEBGUI is overkill for a small business, but that would depend on the specific business and content desired, but I could be wrong on that.

It really depends on need more than size. If the client is non-technical and only needs to be able to edit content, we're starting to look at solutions like Adobe Contribute.

 

Other than that, I am excited about what I am seeing.

We've been very pleased with WebGUI, the community and Plain Black. As a development shop, WebGUI provides us with a platform for quickly building highly functional sites. As web developers, it offers some nice CMS features that empower our clients to control their web site.

HTH,
William

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Knowmad Technologies
http://www.knowmad.com

--- (Edited on 1/8/2009 11:01 pm [GMT-0500] by knowmad) ---

William,

Thanks. Excellent Stuff.

Yes, we are primarily a dreamweaver shop, but the writing is clearly on the wall about the future of web development. I see low end simple sites as a real growth area and a method for developing them with the same tools as the higher end, more complex and fully functional sites is my goal. It may not be achievable at this time, but that's where I see the market taking us.

Naturally, investment in tools and training is significant in this business, and the smaller the shop, the bigger the bite.

Also, resistance to change is a barrier. My developers do not want to change from what they know and are comfortable with, so alas, my pioneering spirit is tempered a bit. With that said, I will continue with the further investigation of WEBGUI with your insights close at hand.

Thanks again,

Ed

ps. In a former life, I lived in Pineville for 5 years in the late 80's. Loved it.

--- (Edited on 1/9/2009 7:11 am [GMT-0600] by dtebh916) ---