Choosing the Right CMS for Your CMS Website
http://www.iwebdevs.net/articles/3654/1/Choosing-the-Right-CMS-for-Your-CMS-Website/Page1.html
Cheow Yu Yuan
Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of OOm, an online marketing agency providing Web Design services.
Check out more Web Design portfolio here. By Cheow Yu Yuan
Published on 08/23/2011
Whether you have made the CMS website your bread and butter or are just trying to save some money and time by setting up your personal website using a content management system, picking the right CMS is always the first obstacle.
Whether you have made the CMS website your bread and butter or are just trying to save some money and time by setting up your personal website using a content management system, picking the right CMS is always the first obstacle. If you are designing CMS websites professionally, your choice of content management systems will determine how easy your clients feel the final product is to maintain and use. If you are designing your own website, then your choice will determine how functional your site is and how much you enjoy the operation of the site.
Going on Popularity
Most people start using a CMS because they hear so much about other people using it. This is the case for most big content management systems like Linux. There are thousands of people running these systems, so others just coming to the CMS market naturally assume that those systems are the best of the best. If they weren't the best, they wouldn't be so huge in the marketing, right?
This is not always the case. There are many people who actually have nightmare stories of using Linux, yet it does have one of the biggest fan bases. You can find entire forums of people talking about designing great websites using Linux. Unfortunately, there are others who have tried Linux and found it to be unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons.
This doesn't mean that Linux or another big name CMS wouldn't be the best pick for your CMS website or the CMS sites you build for some of your clients. It just means that you can't always assume that the systems winning the popularity contest right now are automatically the best for your website.
The same applies to smaller content management systems that aren't very well known or aren't being used by hundreds of thousands of designers and independent users. You can't assume that they are lesser quality or harder to use than the big names just because they don't have massive followings today. Many designers do use lesser known content management systems with great success.
So, the popularity contest may give you some ideas of what content management systems to try out, but you can't make assumptions based on how many people are currently using a system.
Going on Functionality
It is best to start looking at different content management systems in terms of the functionality they offer. Yes, you can always add extensions and other design features to beef up a CMS website, but when you start adding a lot of these extra features you take away from the simplicity of a CMS website. In most cases a few extensions are a good thing, but there is such thing as adding too much and ruining the easy-going feel that a CMS website should naturally have.
The solution is to find a content management system that organically comes with most of the functionality you need for your CMS website. This way you can design a dynamic website with the perfect feel and look without adding on a ton of extra features and cluttering up the backend.
This is the best scenario for you and your client, if you are designing CMS websites professionally. They get the easy operation and simple administration system that they want and you get a functional site that lives up to your name and solidifies your business.
Going on Popularity
Most people start using a CMS because they hear so much about other people using it. This is the case for most big content management systems like Linux. There are thousands of people running these systems, so others just coming to the CMS market naturally assume that those systems are the best of the best. If they weren't the best, they wouldn't be so huge in the marketing, right?
This is not always the case. There are many people who actually have nightmare stories of using Linux, yet it does have one of the biggest fan bases. You can find entire forums of people talking about designing great websites using Linux. Unfortunately, there are others who have tried Linux and found it to be unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons.
This doesn't mean that Linux or another big name CMS wouldn't be the best pick for your CMS website or the CMS sites you build for some of your clients. It just means that you can't always assume that the systems winning the popularity contest right now are automatically the best for your website.
The same applies to smaller content management systems that aren't very well known or aren't being used by hundreds of thousands of designers and independent users. You can't assume that they are lesser quality or harder to use than the big names just because they don't have massive followings today. Many designers do use lesser known content management systems with great success.
So, the popularity contest may give you some ideas of what content management systems to try out, but you can't make assumptions based on how many people are currently using a system.
Going on Functionality
It is best to start looking at different content management systems in terms of the functionality they offer. Yes, you can always add extensions and other design features to beef up a CMS website, but when you start adding a lot of these extra features you take away from the simplicity of a CMS website. In most cases a few extensions are a good thing, but there is such thing as adding too much and ruining the easy-going feel that a CMS website should naturally have.
The solution is to find a content management system that organically comes with most of the functionality you need for your CMS website. This way you can design a dynamic website with the perfect feel and look without adding on a ton of extra features and cluttering up the backend.
This is the best scenario for you and your client, if you are designing CMS websites professionally. They get the easy operation and simple administration system that they want and you get a functional site that lives up to your name and solidifies your business.