[Steve Kohler]

A small group of us are furiously planning out the future shape of the WTMC web site.
We were hoping amongst members there is someone who has has experience of:
*Drupal
*Joomla
*and even Silverstripe

and is able to compare and therefore if you had a strong opinion for one or the other. Points in favour would be that is is:
*Flexible
*Is not too fearsome for administrators to use
*Is easy for web site visitors to use some of whom will have front-end editing rights

[Ian]

Hi Steve,

I’m not a cms expert but I work with some people who are. They say it depends on the requirements… they actually recommend WordPress if the site is smallish and if there’s not too much tricky stuff required, although that said WordPress “can do quite a bit”.

We have Drupal at work. The feeling is it’s good once you get used to it as it has its own unique terminology. Silverstripe is also good. Another option that’s meant to be good is Typo3 and might be worth a look.

If you’re desperate and can’t find anyone I could have a go at assessing options if there are some clear website requirements but it’s been 5+yrs since I’ve had anything to do with CMSs so there’s probably someone better than me!

Ian.

[Jo]

Hi,

We’re just rewriting our website at work – and have been recommended to use Joomla (1.6 – is the latest version which our provider is very excited about). I’ve only just had a quick look round and a brief intro to it, but it does look very firiendly, relatively intuitive and does what it says on the box.

There are lots of add-ons and modules that are very exciting too, apparently (and free / open source).

Cheers,

Jo

[craig]

Warning: While useful for content authors, all CMS’s are inherently evil.

Typically, how the site admins are able make the site look and feel will be constrained by what CMS you choose, and knowledge of the specific CMS you choose will be become more critical than of the more generic web technologies. Because of this you tend to have to fit your site to the CMS rather than other way around…

Just make sure you limit yourself to choices that are widely deployed, well supported (for open source thats an active online community including documentation). Don’t be tempted to get someone to change some of the CMS code because it will do blah. Make sure all changes you do are in templates and plugins.

Work out whether you want members and visitors to interact with the site. There is a trend these days for clubs of the size of WTMC to use more of a blog format, than static page format.

For organisations the size of WTMC Joomla and WordPress would be the most obvious choices. And with other similar organisations using it you are more likely to find appropriate plugins for your needs. Drupal is a current flavour of the month, but usually for people who have money to pay web developers to heavily customise it for their requirements.

$0.02

[Author]

Posts