Hello everybody!

Would like to discuss something with all of you. I have been learning and using PHP for 5 years now and everything I know, I have learned by myself. I mostly made websites for myself, friends and one company i worked for. I would like to think that i have moderate knowledge of php and website building, maybe a bit lower than that... not sure how high is the bar for moderate though. That said, for last year I kept stumbling on posts about CMS systems and how great they are. I have always passed the idea of using one myself, thinking that "i know enough PHP and and dont need one, besides i like to have control over the whole code of my website and to know and understand every bit of it". Not sure how good arguments are these. Keep in mind that i know very little about CMS and how it actually works.

But now... having been working on a website project for a half a year, I am starting to have doubts. Maybe i should have gone with the CMS from the beginning. Switching to it may be a lot of work but maybe its worth it at the end and i am planning to update and develop this project for many years. That is what i wanted to discuss with you. Is it worth to switch to the CMS or should i go with moderate code?. This is my largest project yet!

What is my website like?

• I am using a lot of jquery and ajax.
• It will be multilingual in the future. I am starting with my native language and make it available in more languages when i have perfected the website. I am also adding the multilingual scripts later.
• Users can recommend updates and vote for them
• There is two types of registering. Fast and traditional. With fast you can click registering button and just prove you are human and you are done.
• There is a forum with certain user parameters shown in signatures of every post. Also, there is a unique type of topics that are created automatically with time. Certain users have one of these topics assigned by default. It is similar to like when users have topic of their birth year assigned to them. It will be an important part of the forum.
• Users have profiles.
• There is also article section where users and myself can add articles, vote for them, comment and suggest updates.
• There is also a market section where users can sell their stuff and i made unique sorting box where users can sort only the stuff they need to buy.
• There is also a lot of other links where users can add stuff for personal or public use and read about it but i cant say more without giving away the point of the website.

So here it is. And my question would be... with all this custom stuff, is it worth using CMS or should i stick with my original code? Even if website SEO optimization and structure code is moderate quality.

CMS just means content management system, and by the sounds of it, you're building your own. So I guess you're asking if you should build your own or use an off-the-shelf system.

 

Build your own means you get exactly what you want, but you are the only one doing it. Everythign you want, you gotta code yourself.

 

Off-the-shelf CMS may not quite fit what you want, but there's usually a dev team working on version upgrades, security and the community will work on add-ons / themes.

 

Personally, I prefer off-the-shelf CMS system as it means I'm part of a community, can go to forums to ask for help, and importantly for common tasks there's often an existing plugin available. Plus if I ever need to hire a developer, I can look for someone with specific experience with this software.

 

For CMS, WordPress is simple and sturdy. Joomla! and Drupal are more advanced and give better scope for complex projects.

 

In the end, it all comes down to whether an existing CMS will save you time & fit with what you need.

Ask yourself a few questions:

1. Are you going to manage the content yourself?
    
   
2. How regularly is the content going to be updated?
    
   
3. Is there a lot of content on your website (lots of pages etc to manage)?
    
   
4. Are you looking for a system to create new pages easily and setup your SES based URL's for you?
   

Personally a CMS is very handy when you just want to make a quick change to a word and you are away from your main computer and do not have FTP to access your site.

 

Do you know if you want to build your own CMS or use a CMS (off the shelf)? Below are some off the shelf CMS's we recommend to our customers:

• ColdFusion/Railo (CFML) - MuraCMS - http://getmura.com/
  
• PHP - CMS Made Simple - http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
  
• PHP - WordPress - http://wordpress.org/
  
• ASP.NET - Umbraco - http://umbraco.com/
  

Hope this helps

I strongly advise against creating a custom CMS for your client project (now), simply because that would require you to be solid with whatever language you choose to write it in,there is no way a custom developed CMS can compete with an open-source CMS on security and functionality updates Period.

Thank you for the replies!

 

 

 

I strongly advise against creating a custom CMS for your client project (now), simply because that would require you to be solid with whatever language you choose to write it in,there is no way a custom developed CMS can compete with an open-source CMS on security and functionality updates Period.

 

This project is not for a client, its for me.

 

CMS just means content management system, and by the sounds of it, you're building your own. So I guess you're asking if you should build your own or use an off-the-shelf system.

Build your own means you get exactly what you want, but you are the only one doing it. Everythign you want, you gotta code yourself.

Off-the-shelf CMS may not quite fit what you want, but there's usually a dev team working on version upgrades, security and the community will work on add-ons / themes.

Personally, I prefer off-the-shelf CMS system as it means I'm part of a community, can go to forums to ask for help, and importantly for common tasks there's often an existing plugin available. Plus if I ever need to hire a developer, I can look for someone with specific experience with this software.

For CMS, WordPress is simple and sturdy. Joomla! and Drupal are more advanced and give better scope for complex projects.

In the end, it all comes down to whether an existing CMS will save you time & fit with what you need.

 

I have heard the same from all over that cms have a lot of plugins and for just about everything. But i somehow doubt that it is the case for my project. Most of my website pages are essentially seperate programs/scripts that do very specific things. And i havent seen anything like it in any other page i have visited so far... its for very specific visitors. Theres a lot less content (static) pages than scripts.

 

Side note... i can never use joomla cause in my language it means "drinking place" lol. Bunch of people have used it in the past and, before i knew anything about cms, i always thought "why the hell would anyone put that word on a respectful website footer"

 

 

 

 

Ask yourself a few questions:

• Are you going to manage the content yourself?
• How regularly is the content going to be updated?
• Is there a lot of content on your website (lots of pages etc to manage)?
• Are you looking for a system to create new pages easily and setup your SES based URL's for you?

Personally a CMS is very handy when you just want to make a quick change to a word and you are away from your main computer and do not have FTP to access your site.

Do you know if you want to build your own CMS or use a CMS (off the shelf)? Below are some off the shelf CMS's we recommend to our customers:

• ColdFusion/Railo (CFML) - MuraCMS - http://getmura.com/
• PHP - CMS Made Simple - http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
• PHP - WordPress - http://wordpress.org/
• ASP.NET - Umbraco - http://umbraco.com/

Hope this helps

 

1. Yes

2. Scripts get patches pretty often but theres not a lot of content to update.

3. No

4. That would be good but converting half the project for only that is not worth it i think

 

Thanks for the links!

This project is not for a client, its for me.

Well, I suppose there's no harm in trying since any problems will only affect you, but prepare for spending a lot of time.

And the visitors... but yeah... i already spent like months on this.

Yes, you can use any type of CMS, but i suggest you to use WordPress. Because, it's very easy o handle and you can update according to requirements at any time.

Drupal is best for security purpose. It have a good reputation in terms of security.

The size of your site, future updates and whatever plans for global domination you have should steer your choice. It's no good bunging a three pager about cats in a CMS like Joomla, because it's like buidling a condo in the jungle when all you needed was plastic sheeting between 2 trees.

 

List out the likely future demands, and we'll chip in with our own versions of what you need.

I strongly advise against creating a custom CMS for your client project (now), simply because that would require you to be solid with whatever language you choose to write it in,there is no way a custom developed CMS can compete with an open-source CMS on security and functionality updates Period.

 

Hahaha - open source is like a universal key ... period