Choosing the Right CMS

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

When you are just starting out in the online business one of the questions you will have to answer is what system you will use to power the content of your site. There are many solutions available on the web, and there is also the possibility of creating your own solution in house.

Some people prefer to use packages that have all the bells and whistles and are quite bloated. An example of this type of CMS would be Joomla. Joomla and Mambo have a ton of features, and a ton of great plugins. I was browsing the plugins, and there is even one to create an amazon affiliate shop out of your Joomla installation.

Other people, myself in this category, like to use more specialized systems. These do not have quite as many features, and they are not one stop solutions for every task you could possibly imagine. For instance, dblogger is an example of a piece of software where less is more. It is an incredibly efficient piece of software without all the bells and whistles.

If you know how to program, I would defiantly recommend working with specialized software as it is often easier to modify to meet your needs with precision. You can also setup sites that do things really well. However, sometimes it is hard to integrate multiple versions of software and give the user a consistent experience. So there are some advantages and disadvantages with both methods, just consider them before you decide on which solution is better for your CMS needs.