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Sure, if you have the technical and programming expertise, you can still develop a custom intranet-based CMS from scratch using any number of scripting languages and technologies, but that would seem like you're reinventing the wheel. Although building your own CMS from scratch gives you complete control over every aspect of your system's functionality and design, do you really need this? Unless you have very specific requirements that no existing product or development tool can accommodate, developing a system with a content management framework (and to some extent, buying an off-the-shelf solution) will be a lot more cost effective and a lot less time consuming than starting from nothing. It will also be a lot simpler to justify.

Go into any boardroom and tell senior management that you would like to develop a CMS from scratch and they'll probably look at you like you have a third eye growing out of your cheek. But if you utter the word SharePoint, they'll treat you like some sort of messianic god sent from the heavens to deliver them from content management hell.

As a former programmer and software developer, I have a penchant for coding at will, unfettered by the rules established in someone else's product or tool. But after having seen all the available CMS offerings, I find it difficult to justify rebuilding what's already there. So, if any of you intraneters out there are still developing CMS's from scratch -- without a content management framework -- I'd love to hear from you.

Paul Chin (www.paulchinonline.com) is a freelance writer and journalist. He has previously worked in the aerospace and competitive intelligence industries as a software developer and intranet specialist. He currently writes on a wide range of IT topics, including systems development and security, digital communications and media, content management and web design.

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