• The cost of ongoing development
• Speed and security
• Technical support
• Ability to keep up with a changing Internet landscape e.g. rise of social media, cloud computing, new services
• Your ability to directly manage the site and generate new content

In this article I will try to use some simple logic to reach conclusions about a preferred CMS (Content Management System), rather than getting too hung up over features and technical issues. I believe that technical decisions should be driven by business requirements rather than the other way around.

There are quite a few different CMSs out there, but simple business logic says to go with the main-stream ones that are well supported by active communities, have the largest installed base, and are under active development. This means WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

What are the main differentiating features of each of the three CMSs?

Until relatively recently WordPress was regarded as primarily a blogging platform, and mainly suited to the development of fairly simple websites. This is no longer the case. The development of sophisticated themes, and a vast array of plugins for SEO, social networking, PHP integration and just about anything else, mean that WordPress is now easily customizable right down to page or post level.

Importantly the latest version is also extremely easy to keep up to date, just click on the ‘Upgrade’ button that appears on the top of the dashboard whenever a new revision becomes available. (Backup first!)

Drupal is regarded as the best CMS for community style, membership sites. It is more complicated than WordPress, but easier to customize than Joomla. Like Joomla and WordPress there are hundreds of plugins and themes.

Joomla has an extensive list of plugins and themes, and a great support community.

Now here’s the point. WordPress has now leapt ahead of Drupal and Joomla in a number of significant areas. These are:

• Ease of upgrade, one click, this also helps with security
• Absolute ease of adding plugins and changing themes
• Rapid AGILE development
• Huge installed base means significant development momentum
• Previous difficulties with customization are no longer relevant owing to extensive plugins, sophisticated themes and PHP integration
• Very easy to add and maintain content

I would choose WordPress unless there are very specific reasons not to, if only for the additional security, huge support base, and ease of content management.

Ask your web developer which CMS they intend to use. It it’s not one of the ‘big three’ ask why. Web designers/developers sometimes go for lesser optioned CMSs to ‘keep it simple’ for their customers. If you are the customer, it is easy enough to learn how to manage content in WordPress, and you may as well have all the power of a mainstream CMS.

Blog based CMS systems are very popular, secure, fast and easy to manage and keep up-to-date. WordPress easily leads the pack with it’s huge installed base, , and this means that if you use WordPress for your site you will have not trouble at all in getting technical support, and a very wide range of plug-ins.

The Need for a Content Management System (CMS)

I have been building websites or project managing site development since 1995, and for most of this time the sites were all hand-coded. There were good reasons for this. HTML editors tend to create a lot of messy code, and were hopeless for complex tasks.

The other issue was content management. Once the site was developed the customers – particularly the less technically savvy – had big issues keeping their sites up to date.  ‘Web developer’ also seemed to mean ‘content manager’.  In an attempt to get around this, we built our own content management system (CMS). It was not unusual for web design firms to do this in the 90’s.

This labour intensive approach caused problems. It could take months to put together a large project. It was a struggle to meet deadlines, and costs could blow out. There were  issues with sites not being compatible with different browsers. Once the site was up, it was difficult for the customer to manage their own content. And so on.

The latest generation of CMS

What is needed is a solution that enables projects to go ahead quickly and cleanly. Developer and designer dollars should be spent on meeting the business needs of the customer, and coding specialised requirements that add value. Not grappling with technical issues. In addition, the customer should truly be able to manage their own content using a simple web interface.

In the last few years two or three CMS (Content Management Systems) have come to the fore. They are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. They are all open source, and they are all free. They all represent 1000’s of hours of community development and have numerous plug-ins and attachments.

So why WordPress?

Well Word Press started as a blogging platform, not a full-blown website management system. This means it is easy to use. Easy to post content, without having to worry about a whole lot of templating and other issues when creating a new post or page. It’s also naturally a great platform for discussion and social networking.

Now WordPress has grown way beyond its blogging ancestry. With a huge user base, large number of plug-ins, and some great templates – called Themes – more and more people are using it for full-blown site development.

You may prefer to use Drupal or Joomla for your site. That’s fine there are probably situations where they will be a better solution – such as complex magazine style layouts. But WordPress is easy to use and quick to develop with. It is well supported and easy to integrate with complex PHP applications.

Keeping it simple

In any case online business should be about business processes, not technology. The technology should be in the background. Open source solutions work and are well supported.

Tony Pfitzner