If You Have a Choice, Run from RedDot CMS
I’ve been a software developer/integrator for more than 20 years. I’ve worked in California, Canada, and Europe. And I’ve worked with everything from Cobalt programming to ERP deployments.
Never have I worked with software or a software company as deeply disappointing – as fundamentally broken - as RedDot Content Management (purchased by Hummingbird, purchased by OpenText and now called OpenText Web Solutions).
I’ve watched the company plummet from the developer of a respectable, if overly-complicated web content management solution in 2000 to the debacle of today. Bad management, worse development and an underlying disdain for clients = the sound of a toilet flushing.
8 Reasons You Should Run Away from RedDot Content Management (CMS)
- RedDot Lies. Their “.Net Release?” Their ain’t no .Net in it.
- RedDot workflow doesn’t work. Or only works if your site happens to be structured according to your org chart, rather than user needs
- RedDot pushes LiveServer as a search engine. LiveServer! It doesn’t even do its real job (personalization) well.
- They hate their partners. Which means that there’s no one to support the poor customers that buy the software. You’re on your own. And you’re screwed.
- Upgrades from Hell. Congrats, our new release wrecks your three years of development.
- The rats are fleeing. One sign a company is going into free fall – their best people run away.
- Who is in charge anyway? Four acquisitions in 4 years means the answer is no one.
- If you must buy RedDot, buy in Europe. They charge Europeans ¼ of what they charge us
7 comments:
Sounds like after 20 years of being a developer you've let your skillset become obsolete.
Just because you don't understand how RedDot works doesn't mean you should write a blog condemning it.
RedDot is a powerful tool. I've been using RedDot for 5 years to develop cutting edge web applications. Every project I've deployed has been a complete success.
Bad workers always blame their tools.
I have been a software developer for 20 years. In 2005 I started working with RedDot CMS. I couldn't agree more with everything that you have stated. The product works sporadically, and the support is even less useful. In a recent project, RedDot convinced a very large manufacturing company that LiveServer was the perfect tool to host a dynamic product catalog on the internet. The consulting company I worked for was chosen to attempt to implement this. I tried warning everyone that LiveServer was the wrong tool, but our management only saw the $ for doing the contract work. 7000 hours of development later, we were still not live. In order to get this to actually work, we ended up with over 50,000 static pages that LiveServer 'managed' in order to spoof a dynamic product catalog. Our consulting company lost so much money, they closed several offices to try to recover. I ended up getting laid off for being correct about this?
So, just to confirm - you are the author of this blog, right? It's accurate to say that Brian Kitt from Omaha wrote this blog?
I'm sorry to hear you lost your job, Brian. I hope you don't lose more than that after RedDot's lawyers read this litigious blog you created.
Whether or not RedDot was the right tool for the task you were assigned isn't important.
Whether or not RedDot CMS was implemented properly isn't important either.
What is important is that RedDot has a very impressive list of clients who have a proven track record of success with RedDot CMS over the past five years.
I think their list of clients speaks for itself: http://www.reddot.com/customer_success_customers.htm
In my experience RedDot CMS is very dependable. I upgraded directly from v4.x -> v6.5 without any problems whatsoever. I used Workflow to accomodate the scenario that you said wasn't possible. I've always found RedDot's customer support team to be excellent at troubleshooting & solving challenges.
I'd like you to consider the possibility that there were many reasons why the consulting company you worked for had to downsize. Perhaps they should have listened closer to their developers like you said?
In any case - I don't think it's fair for you to suggest that RedDot CMS is to blame for you being laid off.
I think it's even less fair for you to create this blog when it is not accurate.
I hope you'll do the right thing and shut your blog down.
Regards,
Adam
I have some sympathy for both you guys. I'm a content management consultant who's worked on >50 content management projects and I've seen the upside and downside of many different solutions.
I've no doubt that any implementation of a content management system that works well is due to professional scoping and good customer education.
Projects that fail tend to be those where the business (i.e. not the developers alone) has not been involved with the scoping exercises
...or when service providers use developers who do not know the product fully.
All high end content management systems are highly configurable - they would not be at the top of their tree if they were not. The more configurable a system (and this is not just content management systems) is, the more scope of error exists; and if you make mistakes right from the beginning, it gets more difficult to remedy the entire solution when you need to. Remember, CMS solutions need to be elegant at the back end as well as the front end. Just because a solution delivers web content as per a design it does not mean it is a good solution...
This is true as I have customers who are completely delighted with their solution and others who use the same software that are pulling their hair out - now thats NOTHING to do with the software regardless of any quirks/bugs/features it may have.
Agency staff are often not experts in a field - especially where their consultants may have to support several different CMS platforms - I have heard of agencies taking on CMS projects and 'learning' the CMS platform a couple of weeks prior to building a solution - Now that's NEVER going to work and it never does.
So for a CMS project to really work, the secret is knowing the platform inside out so you know how to apply it to the business case (also remember that your project business case may also be full of flaws) A web site stopped 'just being a web site' quite a few years ago so a LOT more effort needs to go into the planning of solutions than is 'traditionally' thought (ie. by crap salesmen and even worse service provider project managers)
Also, though, the CMS companies do seem to be getting arrogant and complacent with regards to customer service. I can fully understand the bloggers concerns about the company. I wonder if anyone thinks the same of other CMS providers...
In general I get the impressions that big companies HAVE seem to have lost sight of good customer relations/good training courses/good project management.
Perhaps it is all about cost cutting. When businesses are sold an aquired, the people in charge are the accountants and they need to get the business in a position where it can buy or merge with other companies - and these people do not really understand the cultures of the businesses involved as the shareholder's expectations are more important to them - I'd invite these people to read some of Charles Handy's books on organisational culture.
So to summarize, yes Reddot may well be bad to deal with, and their software may not be perfect so people SHOULD be made aware of this but I'm sure that in the right hands a good solution can be built with any mature product. I do feel sad when I visit customers and they talk down their product - so often it's not the product but the design and implementation
Have you stopped publishing this blog forever? That's a shame, because there are not enough critical evaluations of RedDot available on the web - certainly because so few people are using it in comparison with other technologies. I've been using the product for about a year now, and I have so many criticisms from the trivial (the Action Menu's horrible usability failings) to the fundamental (target containers are totally broken).
adamboyle's comment about an obsolete skillset is risible: a skillset is a list of general abilities, and open technologies, not which custom, proprietary software packages you have used. I would be very wary of mentioning any use of RedDot on my CV.
I'd love to write a guest post outlining all the failings that I've identified (so far) in the product. Maybe I'll just start my own blog akin to this one, and post a new gripe each day. I reckon I'd have enough material for a year or two.
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