Why Web Developers are Still Necessary
Web content management systems (CMSs) are rapidly advancing. I am particularly fond of two prominent open-source CMSs:
Wordpress and
Drupal. They simplify many tasks pertaining to web design and development.
Content management systems do many things, including:
- solve the challenge of user administration
- provide permission control systems
- maintain useful separations between user interface design and programmatic logic
- provide extensible add-on architectures for code reuse
- simplify site administration
The availability of high-quality themes and theme frameworks (such as
Thesis for Wordpress) means that it is easier than ever for non-technical site owners (and non-designing developers) to provide decent websites. Some might be driven to think that custom web development is less important now, but many challenges remain.
I spent some time today working one one of them.
Permission control systems are designed to regulate access to individual content items and data types. The
Content Construction Kit for
Drupal provides custom data types. Access to data types (and individual fields within data types) can be established, providing a robust system for site administrators.
There is a flaw in the logic used for permission management, however. Drupal is designed to provide access to content types and data fields to user roles. For example, unauthenticated users could be given one level of access and authenticated users a different level of access. This is fine until irregularities are introduced into data types.
Some data types require conditional access control. For example, an item of a
project data type having a field for completion status may need to be accessible to a group of users only when the status field contains a value equal to "complete." The permission system currently used in Drupal does not directly permit such a permission setting. Implementing this type of access requires custom development.
Web content management systems and frameworks are accelerating the advancement of the Internet because they promote uniformity in design patterns and foster accelerated innovation through the adoption of standardized platforms. The web is still young, however, and consistent paradigms for web interaction are still being explored. Web developers now have more opportunities than ever before.
How will
you advance the state of the web?