Which Content Management System Is Right For You?

The problem with choice is that if you want something, you have to end up making one. While it’s great being able to pick and choose from a suite of similar tools and application, you then have to spend time learning them and making an informed choice on which to use.

If you take an organized approach to the evaluation you should soon be able to decide which one is best for a given situation. Different platforms lend themselves better to different situations, so knowing the range will also, in time, allow you to make quicker decisions about which to use when the time comes.

The first consideration is intuitiveness. Most CMS have a GUI interface but some are easier to manage than others. How easy is it to use and would the client be able to manage it once you have launched the site for them? This is the real consideration that needs to be made here. How knowledgeable is the client or the person who will be maintaining the site? Making the site is one thing, making it user friendly is another. The client must be able to manage the site and add content at will, after all that’s the whole point of a CMS.

Flexibility is another consideration you need to take into account when selecting a CMS to use. You need to be able to extend it, tweak it, modify it and generally mess around with it as you see fit. It also needs to allow frequent template changes as necessary. Most CMS out there allows you to use free-form templates that merely conform to guidelines. Some clients may want to change designs to coincide with offers, seasons of holidays. The CMS must allow them to quickly and easily change the template in order for them to do this.

Talking of extending it, a good CMS will have a whole raft of plugins and modules which allows you to extend it, add functionality and other features. These are essential in today’s websites as they allow more interactivity with the site, different features, highlights, and generally improves a sites ability to provide options for its users. CMS like Wordpress and Joomla have a wide selection of user and programmer made plugins and modules that takes the features way beyond what the platform alone can provide.

Performance and speed of response is also a consideration when choosing a CMS. As already mentioned, some platforms are more suited to some situations than others, and choosing the right one is a big part of this. Some are bulky programs that need a lot of setting up, but can handle massive amounts of data or multiple websites. This comes at a cost of a slightly slower response and page load time. Whereas other CMS are designed for single sites, low to medium content and quicker response. There are also plugins and modules that can cache or compress site elements in order to make the whole site respond quicker.

Choosing a CMS isn’t something to take lightly. It isn’t just a matter of choosing the free one, or the one you know best, but choosing the one that works the best in a given situation. Balance has to be struck between features and usability. The client has to be able to use it otherwise the site fails.