Choose the right CMS.
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System. It is a system that helps you keep track of all the content on your website, such as text, images, and videos. With a CMS, anyone can build a website – even if you have no programming background or coding experience. Most CMS are user-friendly and through templates and modules or plugins you can easily add and maintain the content of your website.
If you are considering which CMS you would like to work with, there are a few things to consider. There are a lot of different CMSs out to choose from. In this blog post, we focus on four Open Source CMS, what they are capable of, and what each of them is best suited for.
Which CMS should I choose?
When deciding which CMS is best for you, it is important that you first clarify the needs of your company and the demands of the finished website. Does your company need a large and complex website, or does it need a simpler website that is easy to update and maintain?
We have chosen to focus on four of the most popular Open Source CMS, as the programming code for Open Source is freely available, allowing designers and developers to not only use the programme but also constantly develop new software for the users.
WordPress.
We start with WordPress, which is the leader in the market as the most used CMS in the world. This means, among other things, that if you run into problems, there is also by far the most help to be found with this CMS. WordPress has a user-friendly control panel, you can find a lot of plugins and designs on the market, and it is a faster CMS than many of its competitors. WordPress is particularly suitable for small and medium-sized businesses that want a great-looking solution within a manageable timeframe as well as a site that is easy to maintain.
At design concern, WordPress is clearly the CMS we would recommend if you have no programming experience and want to ensure the best conditions for achieving a good result. If you want a larger system and a more complex website, you should consider alternatives to WordPress.
Joomla.
Joomla is the second most used CMS after WordPress, and it is more complex than WordPress. The system can be used for both regular and content-heavy websites, and it is particularly good for such as larger webshops. Joomla has more flexibility than WordPress, however, it is more difficult to get to grips with Joomla if you do not have a high level of technical understanding. If you have never worked in Joomla before, it takes time and patience to get started.
Drupal.
Drupal is among the most powerful Open Source CMS. Therefore, Drupal’s CMS is also much more advanced and technical, compared to e.g., WordPress and Joomla. Drupal is mostly aimed at experienced web developers and is thus not the obvious choice if you are a beginner in CMS.
Drupal is a popular CMS for e.g., government institutions and other large security-conscious players, as Drupal has high security scores. This is not to say that the other CMS are not secure, but where WordPress relies on third-party extensions to optimise security, Drupal has its own security conditions. In addition, Drupal is also more transparent about its security than, for example, WordPress.
Umbraco.
Umbraco is a user-friendly CMS that is relatively easy to learn if you have a flair for the programme. However, compared to WordPress, it requires more development hours and a greater understanding of HTML, which is a code used to structure a website and its content. Umbraco is well suited for websites such as intranets, extranets, and sites with many administrators.
Umbraco has all kinds of possibilities in terms of modules (what WordPress calls plugins) and everything can be customised to your design and integration requirements. An essential and important feature of Umbraco is that the platform can be easily scaled and thus developed further as the needs of your company change.
CMSs are different.
As written at the beginning of this blog post, the right choice of CMS varies. CMS are different, and therefore they can do different things. Our best advice is that you first determine your company’s needs and then choose a CMS based on that.
At design concern, we primarily develop in WordPress when building websites for our clients. Although we can work in most CMS, we recommend WordPress because of its ease of use, its many options for plugins and designs, and the fact that WordPress is Open Source. The latter means that you can be sure that the system is constantly being developed and updated for the benefit of its users.
You can also read our blog post “10 myths about WordPress” here, where we discuss the many myths and misinformation that exist about WordPress.