Choosing a CMS

Have you ever wondered what is lurking behind all of your favorite websites? Web designers in Chicago have many different options when they are first presented with a web design project. There are many different Content Management Systems available for web designers such as Wordpress, Joomla and Krypton. With so many options how to you choose the one that is right for your website?

There are many different types of CMS available for editing and managing.  When considering a content management software there are many things that may come into play with your decision. Some CMS platforms are more based around blogging than a pure CMS website. Other CMS platforms are more compatible Search Engine Optimization. Before the design comes into play, you always need to consider what your main target is with your web design. Things to consider when choosing a CMS:

1- Cost: Cost is always an important aspect when making a business decision. There are many different types of CMS available for free and commercial.

2- Security: There is nothing worse than experiencing spam on your beautiful web page. Commercial CMS are licensed version platforms. They may be expensive, but they will be worth the money when it comes to security.

3- Flexibility: Open source CMS provides the flexibility that most designers in Chicago strive for. With flexibility you will be able to create exactly what you are envisioning on your computer screen.

We have collaborated a list of different Open Source CMS to highlight the differences.

­Wordpress:

Wordpress was released in May of 2003. Wordpress is a free content management system based on PHP and MySQL.  It was first introduced and geared towards bloggers and is now used by over 65 million users and not just for blogs, but for websites as well.  As mentioned in the previous blog Awesome Wordpress Plugins, Wordpress allows for many different customizations.  Plugins allow Wordpress users to extend their abilities with web development in a multitude of ways.  There are over 18 million Wordpress plugins available.  Wordpress is very well-organized and very easily learned by new users.  It is a favorite CMS among SEO companies due to its ability to implement and track Search Engine Optimization results.

Joomla:

Joomla is also a free content management software and is written in PHP.  There are over 30 million Joomla users and it is still rapidly growing.  Joomla was introduced in 2005 and just recently released their newest version, 3.0.2, which was produced last month.  There are over 10,000 free and commercial extensions available for Joomla users.  The Joomla extensions include plugins, templates, modules, components and languages.

Drupal:

Drupal is another content management system that has a very large amount of users.  Instead of focusing on blogging like Wordpress, Drupal is purely CMS for websites.  There are a wide variety of optional modules that can add forums, user blogs, profiles and more to your website.  The Drupal CMS is used by 2.1% of websites worldwide.  Although Drupal is seems quite difficult to use, it has very basic website administration and installation.