Selecting a content management system (CMS) is possibly the most important decision for a website (after choosing the right developer of course).  That’s why we thought we’d share our findings on the subject.

What a CMS determines:

1. Which community of developers you can utilize
2. The ease to move data in and out
3. Cost (in terms of time and money) to develop and maintain
4. Ease to optimize for search engines
5. User friendliness
6. Extensibility

Results from choosing a poor CMS:

Microsoft’s Share Point for example

1. A small, expensive, and dwindling community of microsoft developers
2. You become data hostage to the system
3. Very high licensing costs ($1,000 – $10,000), very high maintenance fees ($300 – $500 per hour)
4. Poor SEO, or additional costs to make the system more search friendly
5. Poor management interface – making changes slow and frustrating.  Poor user interface, making the site less credible and less interesting to visitors
6. Limited ability to expand or add new tools and features as they come out

A short history of WordPress

When we started developing with content management systems in 2004, there were quite a few players in the field – and no clear winners.  After extensive research, we settled on Joomla.  We were proven to have made a wise choice as Joomla quickly became one of the three leading CMS platforms.  Today there are even more platforms to choose from, but there are three pack leaders: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla

Drupal is a developers’ platform.  For nerds who sit in a basement and think of amazingly creative ways to fine tune random minutia on their website, Drupal might be the best choice.  For normal humans, Drupal is a no go.  Joomla is the swiss army knife of CMS’.  It can do most anything and it has served us well for many years.  Over the last year or so (2010) we’ve noticed some particular frustrations with Joomla that have caused us to re-evaluate.  WordPress started as a bloggers’ platform.  That means that all of its features were geared towards that of a blogger and not a business entity with a wider array of needs.  However, the success of WordPress is now indisputable.  It is by far the most popular, and is easily extensible.  We have found that the current community and extension base makes it able to accommodate most any business need.

What we love about WordPress

One click upgrades

Traditionally, upgrading a website for new features was quite a technical process involving costly development time.  WordPress streamlines this process into a dummy proof click-to-upgrade interface.

New Multi-Site management

Newer versions of WordPress support multi-site installations.  Historically, maintaining separate websites meant maintaining separate systems.  That means when an upgrade is released, we must implement that upgrade on each of the websites we maintain.  By utilizing a multi-site platform, we can scale our resources better to keep costs lower

Manage from your iPhone / Android / Blackberry

Though it is technically possible to do this on other platforms, the WordPress team has done an outstanding job making this killer feature.  This allows site owners to update their website with almost no learning curve – a feature that we find invaluable.

Very simple and intuitive management interface

Overall, this is the most important, yet also the most difficult to describe.  When you manage as many websites as we do, inefficiencies and cumbersome user interface stick out like a sore thumb.  WordPress is a lean mean website machine.  Easier and faster management means lower costs – and that’s good for everybody!