What is important when choosing a content management system (CMS) for your new website?

What is a content management system?

We are not all professional HTML, CSS or Ruby on Rails programmers - and yet, many people create their own websites. So, how do they do it? They use a Content Management System, or CMS. A CMS is an application that allows you to create and update your website. It helps you design the website, create the pages you need, the menu and navigating and a blog. A CMS makes updating the content and making changes to the website a relatively simple process, including texts, images and videos.

Open-source vs. closed CMS

There are many programming professionals who have developed their own CMS, these are closed systems, which are programmed by their providers and thus all updated and changes are to be made only by their creators. Closed CMS are paid for. An open-source CMS is a platform developed by a community of programmers and which is available for free, for use by anyone who wishes to use it. 

These CMS are called open-source because their source code is open and available to the public. This way, many programmers can join the developing community and contribute to further develop the CMS. The community of developers around such a platform continues to update and develop applications for it, some of which will also cost money. 

The advantages of open-source CMS

The first and obvious advantage is that open-source CMS are FREE!

You can have a website, which can even be quite elaborate, without having to pay monthly fees for licensing a CMS. 

The second advantage is that you are not dependent on a specific supplier to manage or create a website for you.

As open-source CMS is available for free for the pubic to use, many websites have been created using these platforms. There are professional website builders who swear by these platforms as the best! The community of developers and users of open-source CMS is growing daily. Adopting these platforms is easy. The code is open and thus you can keep your website and the CMS even if you decide to change a website building supplier. 

The third advantage is that they are simple to use.

Open-source CMS were designed for being used by people who are not programmers, thus using the CMS and updating your website content is easily done.Installment of an open-source application is also relatively easy.

The three giants of open source CMS are: 

WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

The most popular open-source CMS is WordPress 

WordPress is probably being used by half the CMS websites today. The platform was first created in 2003 and is now up to its 4th version. This CMs has over 2000 free themes (themes are used for determining a design for the website). It has over 27,000 free plugins and gets updated every 42 days - these are two indicators of a dedicated and industrious developing community. 

WordPress started out as a blogging platform, and its most powerful features are still related to blogging. Its best used for image/ brand awareness websites that are created to help create awareness to a brand and contain mostly written content. It’s great for blogs, corporate websites and websites for small to medium size businesses. 

Its learning curve is short and it’s very easy to install the CMS (one-click installment is available with the most popular web storage suppliers). It’s easy to use, change themes and design and it will create all the pages and blog posts you need.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.

WordPress.com will enable you to start your own WordPress website on the WordPress server. You will not have your own domain and the free version is very limited. WordPress.org is the platform for creating your own website, with your own domain. You will also select your own storage supplier. WordPress.org is therefore the CMS you want to use.

Joomla is best designed for interactive websites

E-commerce and social media websites and websites that want their audiences to interact with them are best created on Joomla.Joomla was created in 2005 and is the second most used open-source CMS today.  It has a fine balance between user friendliness and powerful features.  

Joomla offers over 900 themes and 7000 plugins. Its true power lies in the amazing plugins its community of developers have created, which make power features easy to implement in a Joomla website. On the other hand, it’s not an easy CMS for absolute beginners. 

Its learning curve is longer than that of WordPress and you need a higher set of technical skills to work with it. Joomla offers a great help portal and there are many courses targeted at beginners. Users who swear by this CMS say it’s worth investing and learning to use it.

Drupal is a one size fits all feature powered CMS

Drupal is very powerful (used among others by the White-House), and it has many features, but you really do need programming knowledge to install it and to design a website with it. On the other hand, it’s very easy to use for updating your website content. So even if you will probably need a professional to set it up for you, you can then be very independent when using it, even for complex features. 

Drupal was created in 2000 and is thus the first open-source CMS giant. It offers over 1800 free themes and over 24,000 plugins. (These numbers are ever growing in all the open-source CMS applications). Drupal is very powerful and has the power to automate features in your website and is thus best suited for large websites, with a complex navigation structure that has a clear hierarchy. You can do almost anything with Drupal and it’s very flexible. 

Features that might require custom coding in WordPress or Joomla are ready made for Drupal. However, it has a long learning curve and is best installed by professionals. Its best suited for organizations who have full time web admins. 

An infographic reviewing the differences between these three platforms is available here. 

So what do you need to consider when selecting your CMS?

My advice is to use an open-source CMS. It’s free and easy to use for updating your site.

An expert comparison of the three open-source CMS platforms can be found here.

Summary

Popularity - all the three giants are giants! So all are popular and have a good supporting community. Even so, WordPress has considerably more downloads. 

Learning curve, installation and website design - beginners can only install a CMS and design a website by themselves only with WordPress. Joomla and Drupal are harder to install. Designing a website is more complex with Joomla compared to WordPress but Joomla offers more features. Drupal design can only be done by programmers. 

Learning curve, updating content - routine use of CMS - all three open-source platforms are easy to use for updating the content on your website. 

Complex features and automation - Joomla and Drupal offer complex features in the open-source code that will require custom coding with WordPress. 

Type of website - selecting a CMS is best done when considering the type of website you want to create. For a Blog and a simple corporate website WordPress is best and easiest.For an interactive site that is easy to run, Joomla is the most suited.For a large website with hierarchy and a requirement for powerful features, Drupal is top quality!

So what do I use?

I have personally worked on websites with WordPress and Drupal. Being an expert for inbound content marketing for B2B companies has put me in the way of either relatively simple brand awareness websites, blogs (most suitable for WordPress) and corporate websites with large volumes of organic content that required creating a clear hierarchy, taxonomy and automation (best done with Drupal). I think both CMS platforms are great and both are easy to use when updating a website.

Whatever you choose, I wish you fun and exiting times with your new website.