CMS of your choice

Content Management System, also known as CMS, have become regular world in dictionary of web site developers. Webmasters from around the globe, daring to “go against the system”, and develop their very own CMS, are more and more inclined into adapting existing solutions, since unless your personal system is easily adjustable, modern and suits most of your projects, as well as projects of your clients, you risk spending your time, and hence, your money, onto something that can be done with much less hassle.

But when you finally take all your courage, and decide to start using some 3rd party CMS, you face the question with endless debates: which CMS to choose?

Let us think about the key points, CMS of your choice should have:

Commercial or open source

Commercial is usually more user friendly, but it requires licensing, which can be rather costly. It also has a problem of dependency – you will have to stay with developer, in order to get all security updates at all times. In addition, there might be several limitations on code modification, or a situation where developer should issue a fix, but they don’t consider it necessary.

Open source, on the other hand, is free. You can download it, install and test for as much as you like. You can also use it for both personal and commercial projects, with no limitations whatsoever. The code is available, which guarantees that shall you decide to change something, you are free to do it.

Security

Commercial CMS, pretty much as every commercial software, usually feature team of professional programmer, awake at all time, living by their salary, and ready to fix up every security issue as soon as possible. But code can be protected, either technically or by alteration, so no side security analysts can review it. In addition to that, commercial CMS are usually “buy and see” product, which cuts off many enthusiasts, from whom CMS could benefit.

On the other hand, open source CMS is reviewed daily by thousands of people. Security patches are issued as soon as vulnerability is discovered. Plus, code is always available, so you can fix the problem before somebody does it for you. Same time, the code is available to potential malefactors, which often discover vulnerabilities before the main community. Most known example is WordPress – probably the most hacked CMS to date. To the honor of its developers, we should note that main system now days is mostly secure, but 3rd party modules are often not.

Extensibility

Commercial CMS will provide you with basic features. Each new feature is yet another plug-in. Each plug-in is yet another “sub-product”, you have to buy. The same time, amount of plug-ins is severely limited.

Open source CMS usually provide you with a community, writing plugins for all purposes, so most likely what you need is already out there. On the other hand, it takes time before some plugins are updated whenever CMS core is rewritten – time that can often take months, such as with Drupal.

There are also open source CMS with paid plugins, such as Joomla. Wonderful CMS would stay wonderful, unless most requested plugins wouldn’t be commercially-licenses. This renders that incredibly powerful CMS unusable, in situations where either your budget is too tight, or you need too extensive modifications to the main build.

Manageability

It is not the secret that however good CMS is, the real challenge it faces on everyday use. Commercial CMS usually feature number of backup and maintenance solutions, but often lack the ways to perform those.

Open source CMS are too much diversified here: in WordPress it’s a matter of few clicks, but it might require some additional plugins; while in Drupal, it is rather complicated, especially for novice developers, since there are no “quick solutions”.

Unless you’re whiz in shell programming, or know your server (and your job) really well, make sure that CMS of your choice is easy to maintain.

Usability and Learning curve

Commercial CMS are usually intuitive. You just do what you have to do, and most likely every tool for it is present. The only questionable aspect here is how easy it is for you to work with CMS, how fast you can learn to work with it and how suitable it will be for people, who are going to use it.

Open source CMS’s interface is not always intuitive, especially beyond the basics. Some CMS, like Drupal, require you to learn natural aspects of work, and install plugins, if you expect to have nifty WYSIWYG content editors and interface tweaks. Others, such as MODX, have “everything aboard”, but require really lengthy adjustment to manage content.

User-friendliness

Most CMS come with few default themes. Those themes are suitable for personal site, but for commercial project, you definitely need to produce something on your own, or order it aside.

Commercial CMS contain either package of themes, often sold by license, or one-two heavily configurable themes, which you can tune onto your wave, so to speak.

Open source CMS usually give you a choice of hundred themes, few of which are configurable from CMS interface. Minus – lot of people have it, plus – it is free and you can change it the way you want. However, a word of warning: unlike commercial CMS, themes are not always being converted to work with future CMS releases, especially if you modified their code.

Be sure to back up, know what you are doing and keep track of possible changes in future releases, if you’re going to upgrade.

In conclusion, we’d like to advise you to make sure you’ve considered all above-mentioned keys points, when you selecte 3rd party CMS. If the project is personal – as opposed to commercial – it is better to stick with open source, and make sure you aware of “hidden fees”. If the project is for your clients, it’s better to take commercial CMS.

In fact, open source is better even for commercial projects, but not unless you know it really well.