Which Web Content Management System is Right For You?
Posted on 26. Aug, 2009 by Matthew Toren in Blogging, Internet, Websites, Wordpress
The choice of the correct web content management system can be critical to your aspirations. As margins are so thin these days your site design, appearance and rendition can often make the difference between success or failure. The website is your shop window to the world and it fully reflects your professionalism. You have but a fraction of a second to create that first impression to start off with and once the visitor is at your site, you must make sure that they are able to navigate and interact according to your intended purpose.
Choosing the correct web content management solution is a process of narrowing down your choices. There are many hundreds of different options available to you and your choice will be dependent on your needs as well as budget.
As flexibility is demanded in the marketplace these days, your WCM platform should enable you to rapidly respond to your market conditions and in general you should seek to simplify and not leave yourself at the mercy of technical paralysis.
For many webmasters, the choice between open source or commercial hinges largely on cost but you should know that whereas open source is invariably free to procure and to install, you may come up against costs on the backend should you run into problems. Top quality support is not always available right when you need it.
Above all else, your web content management system should be easy to use and control, enabling you to specify your branding with little or no technical restriction. SEO should be almost second nature and your system should come with the tools to make it so. As there are so many different ways of presenting your site these days, different browser standards and, lately, internet-enabled mobile devices, strive for flexibility within your system so that it may be optimized and rendered according to your visitor’s choice. Note that within a good content management system your site’s templates will be separate from content and you should be able to maintain total consistency throughout. As the site will be easy to update, it will be possible to refresh content more frequently and in response to your particular market pressures.
There are many highly specialized providers in the field of enterprise specific content management and you can further zero your selection based on whether you want to focus on Java or Microsoft.NET technology.
Within the open source options, Joomla, Mambo, Drupal and WordPress are front and center.
Joomla is a highly flexible CMS which allows you to create numerous modules and components within a fresh and progressive framework. The latest version, 1.5, marks a considerable improvement, yet while you may be able to install this CMS in less than 30 minutes, you may spend some time getting the hang of it.
Mambo is similar to Joomla, is quite powerful and is simple to use. Its control panel is user-friendly and the system is backed up by a growing community of forum support.
Drupal is considered one of the top open-source CMS systems available, especially as far as its architecture is concerned. This system may be more for developers though, so you’d need to tread warily. Some users find Drupal more functional than Joomla or even WordPress, but unless you are somewhat experienced you may be better off sticking to the others.
WordPress has long been known as the blogger’s platform and it is at the very head of its game without a doubt. It is very simple to use, but remember that it is fundamentally not designed for extensive modification and may not be the best platform if you require considerable e-commerce functionality, for example.
Do you have any experience with other CMS systems?
Matthew Toren
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16 Responses to “Which Web Content Management System is Right For You?”
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Anthony
26. Aug, 2009
Gotta say I agree with pretty much everything you said, I’ve spent quite a few years using different content management systems and when the system selection was wrong, its painful for everyone involved – not to mention expensive in most cases.
You mention flexibility and the many varied ways you can display your site these days, this was one of the main reasons we built http://www.orthor.com – its a new style of CMS, a content management service. It lets you “drop in” content management into any app, and therefore doesn’t try and dictate your app’s functional or technical design.
I think this type of design is a nice contrast to the bigger systems like Joomla etc
Matt
26. Aug, 2009
I’m a big fan of WordPress for it’s ease of use, readily available support, and extensive plugin system. I also have been learning Drupal. It is a more robust and also very extensible system but with that power you lose some of the ease of use during initial setup. However, the Drupal community is determined to change that with the upcoming version 7.
Phil Hogan
26. Aug, 2009
I tried Joomla for a few sites, however I keep going back to WP. It’s hard to find something with as much functionality and flexibility.
Good post.
Phil
James
26. Aug, 2009
I began using Joomla on client sites. I find it to be very flexible and the Joomla community of developers always has a module for what ever functionality I need to implement on my site. I converted my company site (mobevisual.com) to a Joomla implementation. Currently my site is a basic portfolio blog and Joomla makes it simple to update and brand and add new useful functionalty.
I would like to play around with Drupal and WordPress but it seems that I am stuck in love with Joomla. I just am in love with the how extensibility of the CMS. Joomla is a liltle ‘intense’ if you are unfamilar with development. Customizing modules may require some knowledge of PHP, HTML and CSS. I’m a fan of Joomla.
Jane Reyes
26. Aug, 2009
I am a Web developer and personally I love WordPress. It just gives you everything you need for blogging. Joomla is another great cms in terms of business. It has a more friendly feature where you can just put your products, categories, services and others without too much hassle.
Golf Putters
27. Aug, 2009
I’ve tried Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, XOOPS, Typo3 to name a few but I always come back to WordPress for developing solutions. It is the simplest, fastest tool to develop a great CMS in and, if you wait for a few weeks after an upgrade, a reasonably secure system.
Commission King
27. Aug, 2009
You can turn WordPress in to anything you want as it is so flexible and open. It can be a fully fledged CMS just as easy as Drupal can.
Sean
27. Aug, 2009
WordPress is very designer friendly and has a ton of great plug-ins for SEO. I recommend using WordPress unless you plan adding a ton of custom features to the site over time. If it’s a content focused site, WordPress works nicely.
Leon Lewis
27. Aug, 2009
Well, we like to ty everything in with joomla as the main site for products and add a blog with wordpress, seams to work best for us.
affordable website design company
Derek
02. Sep, 2009
I would recommend to add Kentico CMS to the list. It’s stable, scalable, user friendly for the content editors and with excellent support. Low in bugs and if you find some they plant a tree in your name: http://trees.kentico.com/
buy and sell philippines
13. Sep, 2009
I haven’t used any of those CMS except for wordpress which I find very easy to use. And not only that! It’s alerady SEO friendly. Even Matt Cutts recommends it.
Christian Burne
30. Sep, 2009
We typically use Drupal when PHP is the order of the day. It works best for Community driven sites, social networking, etc. For .NET CMS’s we typically choose from this list: http://www.oshyn.com/_blog/Web_Content_Management/post/Dot_Net_Content_Management_Systems
For Open Source Java CMS’s, we are very interested recently in Jahia (over Alfresco, Magnolia and Open CMS): http://www.oshyn.com/_blog/Web_Content_Management/post/Jahia_Open_Source_CMS_(for_Java_developers)
Sunil Jain
07. Jan, 2010
Well i am using WordPress , but i feel Drupal is more stable when it comes to heavy sites or e-commerce sites.
But WordPress being so easy to code and implement is widely used than Drupal.
What do you think , can Drupal replace WordPress??? :) :)
Resan
17. Feb, 2011
keep up the good work on the blog. I appreciate it. Could use some more frequent updates, but i’m sure you got some better stuff to do like we all have to do unfortunately. :p
Social Media
17. May, 2011
Hey i’m in the United kingdom, What a great post regarding social media marketing it is. Many thanks for this can can be found in useful.
newbrandmedia
04. Jan, 2012
There are many factors making up the search engine algorithms that decide where a website will be placed in its rankings.
Whereas content has always been of the utmost importance, five or so years ago we were concerned largely with code and page tweaking, as well as off-site optimisation techniques such as link building. In this day and age of social media voting and various other networks that can be levered to drive traffic, the actual content has never been more important.