How to choose a CMS?

Sometime in the near future I will be redesigning this website, and it would be great if I could use some sort of Content Management System with it, to save me having to do every single little update, and to make it easier in general to update.

At the minute, the only thing about the website that is dynamic is the navigation! It was my first website and I knew nothing like what I know now about the power of different scripting languages. Or valid code. Or the proper use of CSS. :o

I recently worked out how to use Wordpress as a CMS, but it was for something much smaller (boyfriend's band's site). If you have a look through the pages currently (it is a site for a body piercing studio, so don't get offended :P), you'll see that some sections contain quite a few subpages and information. When I redesign it, there will hopefully be an in-depth FAQ section, and I would like to make the image gallery larger and searchable with keywords. I'm guessing most CMSs would have a gallery plugin to make that possible.

I don't know much at all about CMSs, but I've heard that a lot of them can be big and confusing with too many technical features. I really like how easy I find wordpress.

Anyone got some helpful advice? And you'll have to excuse the bad coding, it was my very first website!

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Originally Posted by beans

Anyone got some helpful advice? And you'll have to excuse the bad coding, it was my very first website!

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A friend of mine runs a hosting company and lately he has been setting up his clients with http://b2evolution.net/ It markets to blog management but he hands it off to very unexperienced non web people and they can handle modifying their website.

Before that he used soholaunch.

I have to say, that I personally have hated every content managment system I have had to deal with. But I think that stems from having to everything by hand in the far distant past. Trying to modify content management code feels laborious, and its always difficult to bolt on a solution for some odd corner case the content management system did not think of.

I am currently using Joomla to design a site for my mothers workplace. there is a huge ammount of extensions for it and the initial setup is easy.. tweaking it takes time but is easier than any other i've tried so far. technical mind required as always lol

http://www.joomla.org

this is what i'm building with it..
http://www.mobility-markets.co.uk
try to ignore the current layering problem i'm having :P

I use Joomla for all my informational sites and Instant Update for my clients. They both do exactly what I need.

:smoker:

Initial impressions of Textpattern are good. Only 300kb to upload and lots of functionality out of the tin.

If it's documentation or lack of it that's a concern, Textpattern has a well regarded book written about it. "Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy (Solutions)" available on Amazon.

I hope it's good anyway, because it's on order.

cms made simple or drupal if you need a more powerful cms

what would be better? develop your own cms or use something that's available instead?

I found with the more commercial CMSs, they are not simple enough, now thats not because I have little knowledge they are just not logical. This lead to me writing a CMS of my own for personal use, although It hasnt got a templating system.

I think the last CMS I used was Mambo, which is Pretty much the same as Joomla, Im not actually sure what the difference is, so it would be nice if somebody could enlighten me on the subject.

so do you think using a CMS is more beneficial than building a html site and integrating php scripts when needed?

and is a CMS customized w/ css .. ?


and as far as customizing goes.. can you get just as creative w/ a CMS as a html site if you cannot script PHP?


last question, how complex of a site would you say to decide on using a CMS instead of trying to inject html w/ the php..

thanks for any useful info

CMS is the way I like it as there is less coding once you have a template designed, there arent really any design limitations apart from some dont use lists for menus I think.

CMS is good for all sites complexity isnt an issue