Posts Tagged ‘CMS selection’

Selecting a Content Management System (CMS)

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Creating websites is no longer a hard job. In fact, it is made easier with the creation of a content management system or CMS. There are various types of CMS and for various purposes as well. Some CMS can be an all-rounder while others are specific to a certain niche such as blogging or for eCommerce sites. Choosing a correct CMS might be a problem as well depending on what needs to be done.

First, users will have to think about the site that is going to be made. What is it about and what are the things needed to create the site? An eCommerce site would work best with an eCommerce CMS. Some good recommendations are Magento, ZenCart, osCommerce and many more. These are CMS specific to this certain niche and users can be sure that they are getting the best that the Internet has to offer. This is simply because these CMS are made for the sole purpose of eCommerce. It offers better protection as compared with other CMS and is in compliance with various regulations as well.

For a casual website, an all-rounder CMS would be very good. Some good examples are Joomla as well as WordPress. Drupal is also a good alternative but it has a steep learning curve making it hard for new players on the market.

Next, the design: a lot of CMS comes with boring default designs that are less attractive. However, there are third party designers that create good designs for the site. Identify these designs before actually choosing a CMS. It will save the user a lot of time converting to another CMS in case there aren’t any good designs.

Users should also identify some specific features that they want in their site. Usually CMS offers quite a basic package but there are third party programmers that create additional plugins for these CMS. Get to know more about these CMS before actually choosing them. It will save a lot of time for both the user and the clients if there are any.