Choosing the best CMS

A Content ManagementSystem (CMS) allows you to easily add and update content on your website yourself without taking any external help. Sounds great right, but how do you choose the right CMS for you?

CMS systems were once the domain of big corporate companies with lots of money but now there is a massive range of CMS systems available on the market, some free, some not and all offering different features and benefits. So how to choose the one that is right for you?

Keep It Short & Simple

Unless you are planning on becoming the next big thing you probably only need some basic functions like editing content, uploading images and adding new pages. In the future you may want to add on some more advanced features like a blog. Take some time to think about what features you need and then pick a system that is easy to start off with but which offers plenty of possibilities to expand in the future. Have a look at the demo versions many of the main systems offer, login to the administration side and see how simple (or not!) they are to understand and use.

Go with the flow

Sometimes it’s cool to buck the trend and try out something new. In this case it is probably not the best policy. Going with a system that is well known and used will often mean it is more stable, secure and efficient at what it does over a new or unknown system that not many people are using.

These systems will also have a large user community and lots of examples to help you learn the system and get help when you need it.

One of the main benefits of a popular CMS is that they are usually backed up by a very enthusiastic user base that will develop and provide many add-ons (plugins) offering extra functionality which can be easily added to the site (often for free!).

Seek Advice

We often come across clients that have done some research, found a system and dived straight and start building a site. They then come to us because they get stuck or come across a limitation that means they cannot go any further. Often the CMS is badly written and overly complicated, sometimes we are not even sure where they found it and it often results in having to start again. So our advice is to do some research then look on forums and ask questions from other users as to how they rate the system. Here are some things to look for when considering a system:

·         How good is the documentation (and is there even any at all?)

·         What support options do the developers provide (free, paid, email, phone)

·         How good are the support forums and how active are they?

·         Do they have links to any showcase sites and how good are they?

·         When was the last time the system was updated?

OK so to summarize what do we think is the best CMS?

The best free Content Management Systems

1.    Our top spot goes to the wonderful WordPress content management system. This humble system has evolved from a basic blogging platform to a fully featured and insanely well supported CMS that offers everything you need for a basic website up to advance sites and blogs. There are over 68 MILLION websites running WordPress world-wide making it the most popular and most used website in the world. It is super simple to use for the end user, taking on average only 30 minutes to learn how to use it.

It offers a great range of functionality and offers a dazzling array of add-ons (known as plugins) that can be added to extend the functionality of your site with ease.

It has an amazing range of documentation, tutorials and support forums that will help you learn at any level.

A word of caution: Whilst you can often easily install and setup your own site using your web hosting control panel we would STRONGLY recommend you engage an experienced developer to help you setup your site correctly to ensure it is secure and optimized. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and we get many clients coming to us for help after their site has been hacked. Being the most popular system in the world also makes it one of the top targets for hackers.

2.    Our second recommendation would be Joomla or Drupal. We have worked with both these systems to implement some complex sites but it is not something we do often, primarily due to the confusing user interface for clients. The systems are hard to learn and often quite confusing to use. They offer a lot of power and versatility (especially Drupal) but can be bloated and over complicated for most websites. Joomla is also the most hacked CMS world-wide due to it being difficult to secure correctly for those without the relevant experience.