That decision is which content management system (CMS) you use to manage your web properties.

We can sit here and talk all day about strategy and the edge. I can even lie to you and tell you the world is being inverted and that the key to marketing is superheroes and that there is an ancient myth foretelling the future of web 2.0.

But if you don't have the right CMS, then all the lies I've been telling you will be useless.

Nobody wants that. That's not very heroic.

There are a few criteria I look for in a CMS:

1. open source. You never know where your business is going to take you and what you need to be able to do. If you don't have full access to the source code, you're restricted. It's as simple as that.

2. an ecosystem you can tap into. In my opinion one of the biggest mistakes web 2.0 entrepreneurs are currently making is thinking they need to do everything themselves. It's closer to the opposite: you need to focus on doing as little as possible.

You need to tap into the intelligence around you, not the intelligence in you.

This means you need a CMS with a vibrant ecosystem of programmers, designers, admins, etc. Equally important is that the folks who run the development of the core CMS are committed to developing the ecosystem. This means not only are they making their code stable and flexible to modding, but that they are making their community of developers happy and giving them what they need to customize the CMS. Ideally, the CMS is a for-profit operation whose strategy involves monetizing the edge (not the core).

3. a community focus. Web 2.0 is about communities. It's also about data gathering and customer profiling. Is your CMS designed to enable that?

Based on these three factors, my CMS of choice is vbulletin. Designers will be particularly displeased with vbulletin's tables within tables coding (sorry, no CSS layout for vbulletin).

There is the issue that vbulletin costs $160, or something like that. There are some mods I would recommend -- namely the stuff by thevbgeek -- so let's say the total cost is around $300 for all the code you'll need (probably less, but just to be on the safe side). For lots of projects, that should be insignificant.

For some strategies, though, that cost can be a problem. If you need something free, I would recommend SimpleMachines. The ecosystem is not nearly as big as some other community ecosystems, but it's vibrant enough to do the job on a small project (a project small enough to justify not using vbulletin).

Lots of people have this issue with using forum CMS to do other types of sites. I refer them back to the three criteria noted above. I haven't seen a CMS that can adequately address those three issues that is not a forum CMS. Also, if you use the GARS mod by thevbgeek, you can turn vbulletin into anything. Seriously.

I try not to focus too much on technology on this blog; there are plenty of people better suited for that than I. But make no mistake: at the end of the day, execution of strategy will be dependent upon capabilities. Your capabilities will be determined largely by your CMS.

If you have any thoughts on this issue, or insight you'd like to share based on your experiences and interactions with other web workers, feel free to drop 'em in the comments below.

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