For those of you out there, that don’t know what a CMS is, it is a Content Management System. It is software that takes care of all the content on certain websites. Not all sites have them, but more and more people are getting them. There are several different ones out there, but I am going to talk on a couple of the open-source ones, Joomla and Drupal. As I get more and more clients looking to manage their own content of their site, I ask, what CMS should I use?
Joomla has such a huge following and it is hard not to be attracted to the ’shininess’ of it. Joomla is easy to use for the non-technical and provides lots of extensions.
Drupal on the other hand also has a pretty large group of supporters, but is not as user-friendly. You really need to be able to move some code around if you are going to use it. Don’t let that scare you though, it is something that can be learned. The question is, do you want to learn it? And for most of my clients the answer to that question is no.
So for my second question I ask, who will be using the CMS to manage the site… me or a client? As long as my client isn’t going to want to use 100 different modules and plugins in Joomla, we should be good to go with Joomla for them. Many different modules and plugins in Joomla can break your whole site when combined, if not recorded and used properly. Doesn’t mean you are totally safe in Drupal, but it is less likely to happen there.
If the clients wants some spectacular social networking site or a CMS that works with the security of their shopping cart better, then we would want to go with Drupal. Drupal has better support for those types of sites.
But these are just a few of the features of these extremely powerful content management systems. You really should do your research and ask yourself the right questions. Who will be using it? For what? How often? Will they want to add anything in the future?
If you know the answers to those questions, then you probably know which CMS to use!
