Designing for Content Management Systems

Designing and indeed front-end development for a website that will have content edited by non-technical users poses some problems over and above those you will encounter when developing a site where you have full control over the output mark-up. However, most clients these days want to be able to manage their own content, so most designers will find that some, if not all, of their designs end up as templates in some kind of CMS.
By considering the CMS as you design, you can maintain far more control over the final output. If your designs will be implemented and integrated into the CMS by a developer, then taking control at the design phase will help you to keep control over the design as opposed to leaving decisions to the developer or the content editors.

• Know your enemy
• Keep it consistent
• Do not assume content length or height of blocks
• Avoid using image replacement for text
• Consider the CMS when designing navigation
• Design and create CSS rules for all possible HTML elements
• Assume HTML elements can be stacked in any order
• Use CSS to enforce the style guide and semantics
• Test with real content
• Help your content editors to maintain the design
• Further resources

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/22/designing-for-content-management-systems/