If you are ready to give a content management system a try, the choices can be a little overwhelming at first. There are hundreds of different CMS systems in existence and many can be quite similar. Here’s a handy checklist to help you decide which one is right for your individual needs.
1. What is the target user base for the CMS? Many content management systems are set up with a certain end user in mind. For example, Xoops is geared towards portals and community sites, while Drupal appeals mainly to a very technical user base. If you just need a solid CMS that is easy to understand, you may want to try Mambo, Joomlia or the extend the capabilities of WordPress with plugins to make it more of a CMS than a blog.
2. How dedicated is the development community for the CMS? This is a very big issue when it comes to having new plug-ins, new themes and getting help when you have a question. To gauge how active the development community is, head over to the individual CMS forums. If posts are a few months old or questions are unanswered, this is your clue that there is not a lot of activity going on. This can mean that if there are errors in the CMS, patches to fix them may never get made. You are better off going with a CMS that has a very active community.
3. What kind of options to extend the CMS are available? This is an area that affects site owners more often than they realize. Once you install a CMS and get comfortable with it, chances are that you are going to want to see what else it can do. This means adding plug-ins, getting new themes and different modules. Some CMS’s are known for their extravagant themes, like PHPNuke, while Drupal focuses more on building plug-ins and applications. Although WordPress is not technically a CMS, it can be used for this purposes and it is probably the best when it comes to add-ons and themes.
4. How easy is the admin panel to use? This is very important. You want to be comfortable with installing, running and managing your site with your CMS. Take the admin panel for a test run before you install the CMS on your server. If you have difficulty finding anything or it just seems to complicated, you’ll want to look for a CMS that has a more user friendly panel. The majority of CMS developers will offer this feature on their sites. If they don’t, install the CMS in a demo directory on your server to test it out first.
5. How often are patches and updates released? No CMS is perfect and at times, they can have serious security holes that can result in a loss of your data. You will want to select a CMS that releases updates and patches on a regular basis to avoid having an issue with security.
Tags: cms, Drupal, joomlia, mambo, phpnuke, wordpress, xoops
Share With Others
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...
February 26th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Excellent article. I am currently reviewing and evaluating content management systems for a new site I plan to launch. This helps provide me with some useful criteria to comapre them with. Thanks for posting!
February 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Good read, I can see this being a help in the future.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I found the above article very helpful. Have been thinking about dipping my toe into the water of CMS for a little while now but have found it all a bit confusing.
This has given me a starting with which to work from!
Cheers!
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:37 am
Well written indeed. I started my CMS journey from Wordpress> Drupal > Joomla/Mambo. I find Wordpress to be the simplest CMS of all. Its easy, can be heavily modded, and its admin is very simple. Joomla on the other hand is a very advanced CMS, used when developing professional websites designed for serious business purposes. The Admin for joomla is terribly confusing for a new user, but is very feature rich. The amount of templates and mods available for joomla is enormous too. It all depends on what you want. Both of them are good at their own place.
April 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I think a lot of this depends on the skill and expertise of the people you have to maintain it. If putting things in the CMS is too difficult, people will just email documents to each other. I used to work for a company that had that problem after they spent thousands of dollars on a CMS.
If most of your stuff is just documents, WordPress is really user-friendly and you can be up and running on it in no time. I know several people who are running Drupal and seem to be doing ok, but I hear there is some learning curve.
May 25th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I use Joomla myself, but it has a lot of pathetic problems for something that is open source, such as a 10mb upload limit and spazzing out when a file has a space.
If I could code, I’d fix those problems.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I’ve been using mainly joomla for my websites but am getting a little tired of it now. Editing with joomla can be very slow and work that I can complete in a very short time with my own design takes a long time to complete on Joomla. I am looking at trying other content management systems. You mentioned in the article that phpnuke does have nice themes so I might try that next.
June 13th, 2008 at 11:28 am
While I am familiar with Joomla, I personally do not like the use of CMS. I just find it slightly complicated and a lot of work especially when making small changes etc, If it was me, I would stick to wordpress. If and when I become more knowledgeable on web design, I would then make an html and flash website using Dream weaver or something like that.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:02 am
Would have liked to have seen something about the various types of CMS available. Maybe by name with some comparison as to how they work. Everything that was mentioned is important in choosing one, but getting the proper help when you are unfamiliar is very important too. Some help links would be an addition to the article.
I have to think that wordpress is much easier to use.