Faced with the task on designing and developing a new website you have choices, perhaps, too many choices. If you’ve employed a professional web design service, or you are a competent web designer, you may use dreamweaver or expression web, or another HTML editor, or you could use a ready-made CMS.
A CMS or Content Management System offers many advantages; it’s easy to add content to your website, they are often search engine optimised and very popular with google, there are many useful features and functions already built into the software that would cost a lot of money for a web developer to write for you and best of all, most of them are open source software, so they’re free.
The open source movement is an unstoppable express train. There is now many excellent software tools and systems available and it’s all free. The more well-known examples are the Linux operating system, WordPress blog software and Apache web server software. And the most popular software platforms are stable, with hundreds, or even thousands of developers worldwide working on the code. The downside for technophobes; you will have to pay for service and support, usually to a 3rd party company.
For a blog-based CMS, WordPress would be my choice. It’s hugely popular, very flexible, stable, easy to use and install and has the support of thousands of plug-ins, templates and designers familiar with the platform. You can use one of hundreds of free templates or buy a premium templates for between $50 and $150 (approximately). And wordpress isn’t just for blogs; it can be used for almost every type of site with the right template or design tweaks.
Joomla is an award winning CMS. It’s easy to use and install, free and extensible. Like wordpress it’s a blog but it lends itself particularly well to providing a platform for all manner of websites. It has a strong developer community and professional looking but free templates. So, it’s an all-round web development platform, but with a blog.
Drupal is less well known but very powerful CMS. Much more than just a blog, it’s a highly configurable, open source multi-function software platform. I’ve used it and I must admit it took me a while to undertand it, but once I did I marvelled at many of it’s powerful features; blog, forum, news aggregator, polling feature, shopping cart, membership capability and much more. It has tons of plug-ins and plenty of pre-designed templates. And there are some great sites built around drupal.
So, if you want a dynamic site, where you plan to add lots of content, a CMS will save you time and compared to employing a web designer, it’ll save you money too. But there is a learning curve. Personally, I would recommend WordPress. It has the shortest learning curve and can fit almost any site design you can throw at it
