So you want to build a CMS powered website but are confused as to what to use? Here are some pointers.
There are a large variety of content management systems (CMSs) out there including:
- CMS Made Simple
- Joomla
- WordPress
- Drupal
Here are some rules of thumb for me:
CMS Made Simple
I use this for those few VERY simple websites that have a few pages that need to be updated every now and then. These website don’t have blogs, forums, commenting systems or social networks. If you need a tonne of features look elsewhere. The beauty of this CMS is that it is incredibly simple for end users (clients) to update their websites. There simply is no scary large control panel for them to learn.
Difficulty to setup and configure: moderate
End user usage: VERY easy
Joomla
As you’ve probably guessed Joomla is my CMS of choice for many projects. Once you are over the initial learning curve it is easy to use, install and configure. Joomla is VERY powerful and can be used to develop all manner of websites ranging from simple portfolios and blogs, right up to news portals, large scale organisation intranet sites, social networks, forums and even busy newspapers.
Joomla has a truly massive user-base with literally 10s of thousands of web developers using it regularly. There are thousands of free and commercial extensions for Joomla that when added can completely transform a website into to anything you can envisage.
On the downside, the popularity of Joomla has resulted in it being one of the most targetted systems for hacking attempts (next to WordPress). You need to know how to maintain your website’s security if you go down this road. Also, Joomla is not as end-user friendly for your administrators and contributors so some degree of client training and support is inevitable.
Difficulty to setup and configure: moderate
End user usage: moderate
WordPress
I used to recommend WordPress to be used only for blogs but this CMS has jumped leaps and bounds from the simple blogging platform that it used to be back in it’s 1.x, 2.x flavours. WordPress 3 is a very powerful website platform in itself. In fact it is by far the most popular CMS in the world now with thousands of extensions, both free and commercial available.
Still I would not recommend using WordPress for a site that required social networking (thought there is BuddyPress for that), forums and other very complicated applications. Nor would I recommend it for news portals or websites for large organisations.
Difficulty: easy
Difficulty to setup and configure: easy
Drupal
hmm, the waters are a bit muddy between Joomla and Drupal. Drupal aims at the same audience as Joomla but with a different flavour. Drupal is probably better written that Joomla, is more structured, and has more power out of the box BUT Drupal is not for the faint of heart. You really do need to know quite a bit more about web development before jumping in here.
The web developer has much more power when using this CMS, but that comes with the price of the web developer having to do more!
There are less extensions and themes available for Drupal but one can develop a website that matches almost anything you need when building with this.
It’s a personal choice for me. I’ve developed in both but ended up preferring Joomla in the end. If there was no Joomla then Drupal would be my CMS of choice.
Difficulty to setup and configure: moderate to advanced
End user usage: moderate
In the end the choice is up to you. My own personal choice was to use Joomla for complex websites and WordPress for the simpler ones. I could very easily have chosen Drupal instead of Joomla – they are very close in features.