5000 pages of html, cms or not?

Hi guys.
I have over 5000 pages of html and they're all linked and perfect.
I'm just wondering whether it's worth upgrading to a CMS like Joomla or Drupal.
Wordpress is out due to it's main use is blogs.
The main purpose is to make site wide changes even easier than just updating a css file.

I've read and read and read up on Drupal vs Joomla.
I've decided Joomla might be easier to start with but ultimately when I know what I'm doing in cms then a move to drupal will happen.

How long will it take to learn Joomla? 1 day=8hours? or 10 days? etc.
How long for drupal?

Is it really even worth upgrading?

 

mmm that's so much pages. better in html website.

 

if learning Joomla takes 10 days then probably its 40 days for Drupal.

5000 OR 50000 pages can be maintained with Joomla / Drupal if you
learn it perfect. Joomla customization is easy compared to Drupal !!

 

Yeah this is where I'm at. I'm kind of keen to invest my time in Drupal though as it's more complex and some of the designs I've seen from Drupal alone are amazing, where as Joomla has good end product, I'm just finding it very bland and fast becoming 'wordpress spam' style of modern websites.

What did you mean by the 5000 pages could be maintained if I lern it perfect? That if I only dabble with it I won't be able to maintain the pages as easily as I could inside HTML, and that you must know it inside out in order to maintain pages in it otherwise?

 

in case of Joomla, not much maintenance is required
articles need to be categorized well and there should be a random article showcase on front page / sidebar
in built search engine friendly URLs do not help much and a special SEO may be required to help in earning..

 

Thanks mate.
Through the categories is it posssible to insert a new article to multiple places? Ie the Home Page and then under another section?
This way when the content is outdated/forced off the homepage by new content it is already under it's own section.

SEO isn't a worry. I'm going to be attacking this thing from angles previously not tried or thought of.

 

Never had to migrate a site so large to Joomla - but I would certainly suggest taking a look around the joomla forums and extensions directory to see if there isn't some sort of tool which might help you to automate some of the process. I know this can be done if you have a large number of products for example to get onto one of the joomla ecommerce plugins such as virtuemart, but don't know if you can get some help if they are all text based articles. Worth a quick look and a post on that site, though. Might save you a little time.

As to learning how to use it, I have to say that joomla is pretty intuitive and you can delve into the technical aspects as deeply as you want, or simply use a template if you just want to get a site up and functioning. Either approach is very doable.

 

@theitom,
Thanks man, that was really usefull info. Nice when people take the time to respond in decent English and detail.
I did quickly look over some threads on their forum and it appears it might be doable via some extensions that scrape the original pages... though I'm going to continue reading before I decide to make the switch. Again thanks for the reply!

 

Super welcome fella - we are all working on the old backlinks, but no reason we can't kill two birds with one stone!

The forums over on the joomla site are pretty good, and friendly. I have been a happy recipient of good advice there many times.

Speaking from painful experience when trying new plugins.....get a good and safe backup before you start, just in case!!

Good luck.

 

Too true!
I keep the latest backup as well as the prior one on two seperate drives and a lappy, plus the copy on the server, just incase. One bad loss of data in the past was enough for me to decide that it's well worth spending the 10 seconds it takes to hit CTRL+S, CTRL+C and CTRL+V once a day.
Infact sometimes it feels like I'm locked up in techa-traz. Man that's the corniest joke I've told all day.. and it aint even that funny!

Cheers man.

 

Drupal is actually easier to learn than Joomla

 

Do you prefer it Joomla as well?

 

I have 3,000 plus pages on Joomla with no problem. I suggest to use Wordpress. Much simple & easy to update. Blog or corporate style is depending on the theme not the cms.

 

Wordpress is way to go!

You will regret if you start using Joomla.

 

Joomla is complete crap. Use Drupal but spend the time to master it first.