when design met cms

When I went to Journalism school, I wanted to write.  I’ve always just loved the feel of new pens, or that moment you get an idea you want to write about making you smile on the inside (because let’s face it, smiling on the outside for no reason might make you look a little crazy). Somewhere along the way, I started really liking the feel of CMS’s – the way things are actually more logical than they seem and that ‘aha’ moment you get when you start recognizing URLs and how they’re built, and the way they work as more than a medium to organize and deliver content.

Read Write Web has a great piece out today on Design Management Systems’ entry into our digital world.  According to the article,

Pagelines has developed a modular system it’s calling a Design Management System, or PageLines DMS.

What is a DMS? It’s not quite a WordPress theme, a pre-designed site skin to which you can make small tweaks (if you don’t know code) or major design code changes (if you do). It’s not quite a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG tool. It’s in between, a modular system that lets you visually edit any part of your site—with no coding or designing knowledge. Instead of downloading separate apps and plugins to give your site all the functionality you want, PageLines DMS is all plug and play and ready to go.

“With any theme, you’re going to end up in a situation where you don’t love it anymore because it can’t evolve,” said Andrew Powers, PageLines founder. “DMS means that it’s super easy to always customize and tweak your WordPress site.”

Take a look at this video from Pageline, introducing their site. Could it be the next big thing? Or will it go the way of Ning , a good idea but not mainstream enough- stay tuned!