27.03.2008
The World’s Best Content Management System
Before your eyes glaze over and you click on a link to go elsewhere, read the definition of a CMS:
Content management system (CMS).
The computer software, housed on your site’s Web server, that manages the publishing of content (text, images, video, documents etc.) to your website. Popular examples include Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, Realm Platform and even Blogger.com.View this page which shows some types of content a CMS can manage. Document created for rdCMS (now Realm Platform).
My Experience With CMS’s
Am I qualified to write an article on what is, or should be the world’s best CMS (Content Management System)? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll let you decide that by telling you briefly my experience with them.
I started designing websites in 1999 (9yrs ago at the time of writing this) and after developing sites for larger and larger clients, the maintenance of the content became so much of a handful that I was forced into the realm of CMS powered websites. I started by introducing small pieces of manageable bits of content, like news modules and custom written photo galleries, to going the whole hog with some open source systems.
In between all that we somehow managed to write our own CMS, which is now a thing of the past. A beautifully created system that went by the name of SimpleCMS, we stopped development on it only a few months ago for various reasons. The main ones being that the open source generation is creating such wonderful pieces of software and the proprietary (commercially sold) systems spend so much money and time not only on their creation, but their marketing and sales.
Am I qualified? You decide.
The Short Answer - It Depends!
I hate giving that answer to a question, and I hate receiving that answer when asking one. Quite frankly, there is no other way in this instance. It depends on your requirements, it depends on your budget, it depends on your timeline, and it depends on what your user’s skill level is.
I’ve tried. I really have. I’ve tried to get one CMS that just fits every need, and there is one system that I can say almost fits the bill. That system is Realm Platform. This brings us back to budget. Not everyone can afford the price tag that comes with a site running on a system as advanced as that. You may wish you could, and think it’s unfair, but I’d also love to own an Aston Martin DB9. Sometimes you have to settle for what is realistic.
If you’re a small company or even an individual (photographer, freelance writer etc.) then you might not have the capital to spend on a custom designed website running on an easy-to-use CMS. You can go as low as free, by setting up a blogger account and just choose a theme that is suitable. Not very unique, but you can.
The next level up would be registering your own domain and setting up some low cost hosting. With a database available, you can install something like Wordpress, or have it installed for you. Choose a theme from any of the many available on the www and there you go. Still not very unique, but it’s yours and a good start should you want to commission a designer and themer to modify or create your own look and feel.
Edit: Just a quick comment on that paragraph. We’re offering a rent to own service over at Sitepress where you can pay your site off over a period of 1 - 24 months.
A custom design. I will always maintain that design is how something works, not how it looks. Window dressing only makes people get that warm and fuzzy feeling, but if there is no purpose behind a design, nor any consideration to how people will use and interact with your site, then your efforts are ultimately wasted. A decent custom design shouldn’t break the bank and if you choose your (experienced) designer wisely and communicate effectively with them, you should come out on top. Make sure they know the CMS you’re using, else you’re in for a rocky road.
Do Your Homework
Most systems offer a certain amount of versatility with regards to how things are displayed and the way they work. Most , if not all however have certain aspects that cannot be changed. They are built into the core of the system and overlooking something you deem integral can spell disaster when your business model doesn’t reflect that of the CMS (eCommerce specifically here).
One of my freelance programmers (Mike from SkipJack) once said to me about X-Cart, a proprietary eCommerce system, “don’t expect to modify the system to suit your business, rather look at it as adjusting the business to suit the software”. And although that sounds pretty harsh; unless you have a pretty damn large budget it’s the gospel truth.
You can browse a large number of open source content management systems on OpenSourceCMS.com, read reviews and demo the back end and front end of the systems. If that boggles your mind, then speak to someone like me and I can put things into laymans terms.
So What Is The World’s Best Content Management System?
Depending who you ask that answer could vary to at least 50 different systems. Joomla zealots will shout “Joomla!” in union while the poetic code writers and themers for Wordpress will make their presence felt. Drupal, Plone, Vignette, DotNetNuke, Movable Type, Expression Engine, Typo3, Xoops, Nucleus CMS… I can go on, I wont.
Your best CMS is the one that:
- suits your requirements
- has a healthy community or company to support you and your website
- is secure
- is browser compatible (works in all major browsers)
- is fast
- suits your budget
Well, thats my take on it anyway.
S. Potter 27/03/2008 at 7:11 pm
As a software engineer in the web/internet space for 12 years, I would also like to mention that more often than not a business needs highly custom CMS solutions.
While many of the popular OSS CMS’s you mention are “customizable”, the outcome (even if you following the “best practices”, etc.) are more often than not clunky and not at all elegant on a software maintainability perspective. Sometimes you really just need to write your own custom CMS for your application if it needs a lot of custom work. That then leads us on to the discussion of “the world’s best web framework”, but the answer to that is also very similar to your answer on CMSes!:)
Tony Lindskog 27/03/2008 at 7:55 pm
Well, being the Editor-in-Chief of a Joomla centric web site, I of course root for Joomla, but I also run WordPress web sites.
I would say that Joomla is probably the least represented gung-ho users; I would say your typical Drupal or even WordPress user will scream much louder than the average Joomla user…. Or it could just be the people I hang around.
All three are great CMSs and there are others but those are the three big ones… Each to his own, right?!
Ross Allchorn 27/03/2008 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for your comments, Susan and Tony.
Susan, I fully agree that things can be very clunky and not very well integrated when using some of the open source systems. I do however maintain, that with the right choice of CMS, and more importantly, the right choice of person/company to set it all up can end in some favourable results.
For very demanding needs, I think something like Realm Platform is ideal albeit expensive.
Tony, I am a big fan of Joomla. I attended Joomla day last year and wear the shirt regularly (geek hey?). I didn’t mean anything about the Joomla crowd being gung-ho, but rather just picked them as an example… could be Drupal, or Wordpress.
To both of you though, I feel that while Joomla is great and writing your own CMS is an option (a very demanding option); just doing your homework, researching the options (not only the free ones) is your best plan of action.
James Burrows 28/03/2008 at 12:36 am
Hi Ross, really interesting piece. We been building a CMS (called MicroCyte) which kinda layers on over the site rather than the site being driven by it. The idea is that the developer builds the site how they would want it to look and work and then decides which parts they want to manage simply by adding ‘_editable’ to the id tags in the template markup.
In that way we get a nice mix of versatility and built in functionality without needing to bend the design or functionality of the site to suit the CMS or make the CMS do horrible things to support the site design.
I would say the ultimate CMS is probably not one which tries to manage absolutely every aspect of your site, but rather one which provides a solid base layer of functionality and gets out of your way to allow for the more bespoke things you want to develop.
Ross Allchorn 28/03/2008 at 9:26 am
Thanks James, I had a look at your site. Looks very good. Good luck with it.
What throws a spanner in the mix is when the client wants multiple user access rights, methods of multiple signoffs of content (author>editor>publisher etc.).
Throw in scheduled publishing, a CRM system and integration of the shopping cart system into the client’s Pastel setup and things are looking considerably more extensive.
One main point I was trying to make in my post was that you can find a CMS for any website, but none are necessarily the best for every need.
Jonathan 28/03/2008 at 4:05 pm
For as long as there are different types of user requirements, there will be different types of CMS systems. Otherwise there would only be one web developer and he would be one rich bugger. As a php developer I always prefer a system that is (correctly) custom built to a client’s needs, otherwise you can end up with all kinds of fun and games down the line.