To CMS or not to CMS...that is the question...

Okay I have the intention to create a site that includes a blog, news, videos, a forum, a store, advertisements, research etc.. Its going to be encompassing the natural lifestyle and natural way of living. Now should I use a CMS? and If so which one would be better? I have tried Drupal and it was just really confusing and hard to get started with. I didnt know how to create static pages like about, contact, store, blog...etc... so was discouraged and stopped. I have sorta looked at joomla and understand its okay.... wordpress seems to be the easiest to use and is getting better as far as being more cms driven instead of blog-only oriented...

I will probably be paying for a custom template as I have a particular design in mind. my budget would be under $300 for the template. I can handle the adding articles and all the stuff past that Id just need a custom themed template that will work with plugins I use or has someone willing to mod it or help if plugin issues do arise after installation...

so basically my understanding...

drupal=harder to learn, can be very expensive and hard as ever to customize to your liking. Not good unless for a huge scale project like Pepsi.com or something/someone who has $$ to burn for development.

joomla= has been getting better, is easy to learn, loads of easy to install mods/plugins. easier to customize by hardcoding (altering the css/html),

wordpress= has been improving and becoming more cms driven instead of only blog oriented...can custom pretty easy. easy to update on the go..

Now the question is which of these would work best for me for this type of site? or should i say screw cms and just do php/java/javascript custom designed site?

Im so clueless and before I spend $$$$$$ and energy pursuing a particular avenue I want to make sure I know what I am getting into!

I really appreciate all and any help (also if anyone does design for the recommendation that comes out on top... pm me quotes for the basic theme I have above please!)

I also have a thought-bubble-web think (forgot what they call those charts) that goes into depth of the structure and content of the site

 

anyone??? please help id really appreciate it

 

Hi,
You've analysed the above CMSes really good. Drupal is more programmer friendly so seems difficult to new users and on the contrary ,Wordpress is really easy to use and maintain. But there is one thing that i've noticed while using wordpress for a non-blog site and that is there are some limitations on how you can organise the content on your website. That's where Joomla comes into play, it has templates which have many possible module positions and you can use them to arrange your content on website .

Joomla is a middle path i.e it's easy to learn and use ,while it can be easily custom programmed to do what it can't do .And you already know that it has a really large no. of extensions available and there are extensions available for extensions too. for e.g there is Forum extension for joomla and then there are extensions available for this forum extension too. If still something doesn't works out, then there is a large and active community of joomla users ready to help you. Also, joomla extensions are really cheap, most of them are under $30 and a plethora of extensions are freely available.
Templating system is really powerful, and there are many joomla template clubs which make really beautiful templates .You can buy membership of one of these clubs for a limited time and you get access to the templates they've made .Membership cost is really nominal (under $100 per year) .

So, if i were you , i would not go for custom coding all that stuff you need when there are extensions available for everything you've mentioned .So, go for Joomla. I've been using it for over 3 years now and i've never looked back at any other CMS since then. I learned to make modules and plugins myself, which was not so difficult, so there's hardly anything that i can't do with joomla right now.

Good luck !!

 

hank you so much for your reply!!! Now I have heard that the way that the joomla web pages are formatted isnt great for SEO, is that true?


Are there any downsides to joomla?


howd you learn to do modules!!?? what kind of coding experience would i need???

 

It's true that, by default the SEO structure of joomla isn't much good. But there are extensions for it too. Like for internal linking ,SEO friendly URL's ,Meta keyword and Description ,Titles and everything else related to SEO.
Certainly there are some downsides to this great CMS too. First is the learning curve :You can master basic and not so advanced features of Joomla in almost few hours, but to harness the true potential of Joomla, you would need to experiment with it for some time. Second is : Some extensions require rigorous configuration before use.It's good in a way that it gives you high degree of flexibility but for novice users it can be a nightmare.You may end up configuring different things for hours and still not get the required output.But that happens rarely because most extension developers want good user experience so they try their best to make it as easy as possible for everyone. But in some cases it can't be helped, like if you've installed a forum extension ,it would definitely need a lot of configuration as it is a whole different concept added to joomla as an extension. Developers have to provide those advanced configuration options for more personal look and feel.

For making my own modules and plugins , i started with editing a few of them first to get the hang of things. Joomla is an MVC architecture based software, so things are not so easy for novice users. You need to understand how joomla core framework works. I use "Codelobster PHP edition" for making PHP projects and it has inbuilt functionality to make modules,plugins and components for Joomla. You just have to click one button and everything required to start building your extension is automatically created. You just have to edit those files then.
Coding experience required would be : Around 1 Year coding experience in PHP with strong concepts on Classes. Good understanding of MVC Architecture .Good understanding of Joomla Framework.

 

Why settle for anything else but Wordpress? Wordpress provides people without coding expertise to build a site that's excellent for SEO, and adding new content. Many would compare it to drupal and joomla, but over the years, wordpress has proven its greatness.

 

Agree with that bolded text. Wordpress is very good but the flexibility is a bit lacking at times. Wordpress is my favorite CMS and I also purchase stuff such as premium themes, plugins, scripts etc. related to wordpress mainly out of all the CMS. Wordpress is good for blog as well as portfolio or single page business sites but it does not suit other types of non-blog websites to that extent. Having said that, none of the other CMS can compete easily with Wordpress in terms of SEO and only Joomla comes a somewhat near though still a long way off. But then there are also tricks in wordpress too such as using a static page instead of the home or blog page in case it does not suit well to the topic you are building or if you are not planning to update that frequently.

 

There is no doubt, WordPress is really good CMS, but there are some limitation.

To be honest, i use Joomla for my portal that runs, poll system, discussion board, videos with rating and blogs (for news)

It is bit slow for me , after customization but still stable.