Small and medium business sized business are increasingly choosing to build their websites with Content Management Systems (CMS); but with so many available, how do you choose?
Ultimately, your choice of how you develop your website will come down to your budget, in this post I give an overview of some of the freely available Open Source Content Management Systems available on the net. In doing so, I outline some of the things that are crucial to consider when planning your new website.
I’ve talked to a few people and businesses recently who have invested time and money into developing a new website only to find out that they’ve picked an unsustainable option. Often, this comes from an expectation that they will be able to manage and update the website in-house, only to find that it’s far more complicated that they first thought. I’ve found that generally speaking, large design and development firms are the worst offenders of rolling out a good looking website, but failing to follow up with their clients to make sure they are able to keep content up-to-date.
Another issue that people face occurs further down the track when they are looking to expand the functionality of their website. Choosing a custom made CMS developed by an individual company can lock people in to only dealing with that company down the track for development upgrades. This can prove to be extremely costly.
So, I identify two main considerations to think about when you are planning a new website:
- How will we keep this website up to date? Do we have the internal skills? Are there free tutorials online so we can learn? How much does my web developer charge for training?
- What is our 3 year plan for this site? Will we want upgrades later on? Are we able to select from a wide range of companies to implemet these upgrades
In my opinion, the safest way to ensure that your new website is sustainable and to factor the above 2 questions in to your planning, you should choose a popular Open Source Content Management System like Joomla, Drupal or WordPress. Here’s why:
Joomla has around 9000 extensions that you can install to expand the functionality of your site. I’ve detailed a few of the must haves in a previous post. It also has a ton of user manuals made by the community on youtube, and has a a large community base of developers. This means that you will have a wide developer community to choose from if you need to upgrade later on, and you will have no trouble finding resources to help you learn how to keep your site up to date.
There’s no doubt that WordPress is an extremely user-friendly, out-of-the-box solution for brochure sites and blogs. With services available from WordPress themselves, you can get your site up and running instantly (hosting, domian registration all done through wordpress). There are also a tonne of themes and templates available to customise your site for as little as $35. For more advanced sites like eCommerce and custom-search functions WordPress is also very developer friendly. Like Joomla, it has a huge developer and extensions community so you won’t run into problems later on.
Finally, there’s Drupal. Drupal is very developer friendly, but not so user friendly for people who don’t know what they are doing. It does however have a very large community of developers and extensions like Joomla and WordPress.
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