There are so many times I built a site using a cms because the client wanted to make updates themselves. I even spent a lot of time sitting with various personnel on the client’s side, teaching them all the various functions and features of the cms, and what they could do. However, I always ended up either cleaning their mess or doing all the maintenance myself anyway.

Nowadays, I use a cms only to make things easier for myself, and don’t offer access to the clients.

2) With empowerment comes responsibility. For example, updating content, properly naming image files, thinking about SEO and keywords, etc. These all matter now. A state of the art site today – note: I’m not talking bleeding edge, just standard best practices – is quite a ways from a lot of clients’ last static HTML website. Some want to move past their current ball & chain and are all ears. While others have high expectations about results but haven’t quite caught on to the fact that the “just a website” days are long gone. The level of the game is higher. Excelling takes time and attention to detail. But not everyone is up for that challenge in spite of what they say about the results they seek.

2) Access roles should be assigned based strictly on need. For example, the primary client (e.g., owner) should be given two sets of credentials. One that’s for Admin things and one as Editor (if we’re sticking with WP). Only when there’s a need for Admin powers should that risk/responsibility be exercised. Day to day editing type things are for the Editor persona.

3) Finally, @Andy Griffin (comment previous to mine), I’d like to suggest you check out ExpressionEngine. In short, EE is the best of both worlds. I love WP for a lot of things. But the fact is when it comes to fully customizable work, EE is years ahead of WP. And there’s just no way anyone can do up a proper CMS for $300 what EE does out of box for that price. The real games begin from there :)

I think less of it applies to larger and/or well funded organizations. For instance any organization that hires a design firm to do their design work probably shouldn’t be tweaking the color of their text. I mean if they were trained and qualified to do that, would they have hired a design firm in the first place?

Minor tweaks might be OK, but many of our clients come to us asking specifically for stronger brand cohesion, and letting *some* of their editors change font colors would be inappropriate.

Some clients specifically request that some editors not have image upload permission for the same reason. While anyone *can* crop an image, you have to have some training and experience to be able to crop an image to tell the story you want to tell.

In terms of content, I agree that in the *ideal* world clients should edit their own words on the page, but the reality is if the person doing the editing doesn’t have a smart-phone they probably don’t fully “get” how people use the internet, and therefore really *aren’t* the ideal people to write the content.

If their choice is between having their jack of all trades programmer edit the copy or do it themselves, obviously they should be doing it themselves, but clients often need help with content.

As web experts part of our job should be assessing what a client can do GREAT and giving them tools to do what they do best, and then providing them with help (not just tools) for the things that they’re not as strong at….