Choosing a CMS
As you probably have noticed, there are a lot of tooling available for building and maintaining websites. Basicly tooling can be divided in two groups: Clientbased software and serverside frameworks (mostly Contents Management Systems) .
With clientbased tools the site is completely build and updated on the client machine, and after each change the changed (HTML-)files and images are uploaded to the webserver. Microsoft Publisher is an example of a clientbased tool. The easy of use is the main advantage for this software. The lack of interaction with the site-visitors and co-authors is a major problem. For static sites clientbased software is a good choice.
But in the end the customer and vistors want more, more interaction and more cooperation. Some want a forum on their site, some want additional authors, a gallery, a blog, you name it. Therefore, if you are in doubt, choose a serverside solution. And choose a CMS that is expandable and fits the users needs and competence, even in the future.
Choosing the right CMS is not that simple. Following is a list of requirement and features you may want to consider.
- Reliability supplier:
- Number of developers
- Support by and/size of community/ Support community interaction through discussions
- rate / speed of (security) updates
- Number/quality of plugins
- Quality of framework/documentation
- Overall performance
- Separation of content from presentation
- Features:
- In-place commenting on content
- In-place editing of content
- Threaded discussion groups
- Control of access privileges
- Searching of content (SEO)
- Authentication before seeing any content
- Session control, including expiration and the signature of legal terms and conditions
- Simple learning curve of the content management system
- Simple administration interface of the content management system to hand off to the client
A short personal comparison of a few CMS:
| Name | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Drupal |
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| WordPress |
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| Typo3 |
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| Joomla |
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