Hi all,

 

I have been tasked with implementing a new website for my company and would
appreciate any advice on which platform to base this new site on.

I originally looked into Wordpress and have to say I was very impressed with
the overall ability to change all areas from the background CMS but have
struggled putting together something that looks professional enough to pass
muster.

 

For this reason I am outsourcing the project and have identified a company
that offers bespoke website design for a reasonable price, however, the system
utilises their own CMS system of which you can log in to make simple amendments.

 

My question is; what do web designers think of either option?

 

If I could ask everyone to remember that we are a small business seeking to
redesign our current site with a far more professional look but budget is fairly
tight so a complete bespoke solution would not be an option.

 

If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Wordpress. I think it's got the right amount of support, community and plugins, and it's free, so you really can't go wrong assuming you're picking the right tool for the job. You wouldn't pick a hand-saw if you wanted to nail two pieces of wood together, and in the same way, you'll need to know what wordpress is capable of and if it's right for your requirements.

 

In my experience though, Wordpress is so versatile that if you can't do it natively with the core framework, some smart chap will have written a plugin or two that you can install that'll let you do what you want.

 

The advice I give to anyone looking to start out with wordpress is that you shouldn't make your site around it. Instead, code your site EXACTLY as you would a normal site, then add in your wordpress functionality. The wordpress codex is full of helpful, digestible tutorials on how to implement almost every feature, and there's no shortage of third-party tutorials on the internet or youtube.

 

With this in mind, if you can't programme something that looks professional, it's good that you've identified this already. Wordpress won't be the problem, rather your design skills and programming skills. This isn't a bad thing however. On the internet we're constantly comparing our work to that of the very best designers and programmers on the net and often our work simply doesn't compare. It takes lots of time and practise to create a beautiful web, and identifying that you're not there yet will only help you progress as a designer.

 

In my business, I offer clients wordpress. A bespoke CMS means you're tied to that company, and getting another designer/coder in to refresh your content (if you have to) will be expensive and time consuming.

 

What you're telling us about your company budget is something I hear all the time. If we were to rephrase it, it sounds like this: "I want a Ferrari but I don't want to/can't pay for one." Until businesses learn to truly value their web presence and how much of an impact in modern business it will have, small businesses will keep falling by the way-side. Generally speaking (though this isn't a rule) you'll get what you pay for. Experience, design talent, speed, support, etc etc are all factors in pricing.

 

In closing:

If you're going to get a CMS and you're choosing between a bespoke solution and wordpress, choose wordpress for the reasons listed above and more.

Secondly, if your company can't afford to pay a professional for their site yet, don't get a site done. You've waited this long, you can wait a few months more until you have the money for a professional who will give great results.

Finally, if you're concerned about this company who's offering you a reasonable price for their bespoke CMS and you'd like a different option (and you're based in the UK), you could consider me, Williams Graphics, to provide basically what you're looking for. Bespoke website design, Wordpress CMS, modern features like responsive layouts, fresh ideas, well tested code. Just visit my website, www.williamsgraphics.co.uk and take a look.

Actually, I personally wouldn't use it for anything at all.

 

What would you use (let's say for a 10 page company site with a blog)? Excluding custom build

What would you use (let's say for a 10 page company site with a blog)? Excluding custom build

 

Craft, Statamic and Perch are good choices, but not free.

As with all things you really need to look at the types of content you need to deal with, the abilities of the people who will manage the site day to day, and the total cost of ownership.

 

Wordpress is probably fine for general dated "post" type content such as a news site, but like many similar systems once you reach outside of that into common things like structured content, data relationships and manipulating content in numerous ways, Wordpress relies heavily on it's plugin architecture or expensive custom development.

 

"Bespoke" content systems as you describe are often of dubious quality, the ones I've seen are ok but not brilliant, and for any customisation it can cost you a pretty penny, as well locking you in. I've not yet seen one of these systems (outside of the big newspapers) that handle structured content.

 

As Jack said there are many excellent new breed CMS's like Craft, Statamic, Perch which it's well worth looking at and they don't suffer endless security problems as the Wordpress eco system does. Sure there's a small licence fee for them but it's a small price for a quality product and usually your developer will factor that cost into their quote anyway.

I'm turning my site into one that uses statamic. Its going tons faster than something like wordpress. Time savings alone save the money I spent on the cms.

Just a glance at the source code of the majority of WP sites gives me the shudders.

There are plenty of alternatives, some at a small price as mentioned, some open source.

Processwire is an excellent CMS (although more of a framework), extremely powerful with custom fields and jQuery-esque API.

OctoberCMS is another, its still very new (currently in Beta), but it's looking very promising and built on top of Laravel using Twig templating. Worth keeping an eye on.

Thankfully Wordpress isn't the only option, this blog post sums up everything wrong with it.

I'm turning my site into one that uses statamic. Its going tons faster than something like wordpress. Time savings alone save the money I spent on the cms.

Indeed, I've got a project coming up that's ideal for my first production Statamic site, looking forward to doing that one! I played with the original release and was very impressed with what Jack M accomplished, one look at the changelog http://www.statamic.com/changelog and you can see where it's going

Edited July 12, 201412 yr by BlueDreamer

I spent an hour last night installing and looking at Craft. Looks really good, simple and I love Twig.

Statamic also looks good to me - on my list to explore further later on.

Thanks for the advice – certainly looks like I have my work
cut out investigating all the options but at least I have somewhere to start.

 

Much appreciated.

With respect, don't expect to make a decision on which CMS to use yourself as you will not have the expertise to make a judgement. Find an agency whose work you like first. Do not choose an agency that provides a proprietary CMS. If you do, you will be tied to that company for the lifetime of that build. Choose an agency that uses a widely-used, reliable CMS that will have a large developer community so that if you need to switch supplier in the future, you can without too much pain. Ask to speak to some other of their clients who use the same CMS for a referral. Ask the agency if they have a demo installation to see the admin interface. Ignore the advice from the developers on this forum, as they are giving you an opinion from a developers point of view not an admins ; ) . Good luck!

Why isn't anybody mentioning Joomla as a content management system? I personally now prefer wordpress, but only because as a developer myself it is very easy to expand the system. But Joomla has it own advantages too, in my opinion

 

Ignore the advice from the developers on this forum, as they are giving you an opinion from a developers point of view not an admins

 

A client doesn't choose the CMS, a developer does. A good developer will choose a tool that works well for the project, whilst maintaining a friendly interface to the content.

 

We use clean-slate CMS's, so we can't really demo a CMS that changes depending on your content and requirements.