30% of all websites in the world are based on a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS will provide a sound foundation upon which to build websites for fun, business, community groups, or large geographically distributed organizations. There is a system for everybody and some are better fits for you than others. After getting a sense for your needs we will use one of three.
WordPress is the most popular content management system on the web today accounting for about 54% of all CMS based websites. It's the easiest to install and configure. There's many very good themes to select from as your site design. Developers have supported it with a large number of widgets and plug-ins. It's also very easy to customize and update with new content. It's the simplest of the CMS systems and it's simplicity may very well be the limiting factor. No software can simultaneously be simple and have a complex set of features though their marketing would have you believe it. It is designed to be a blog though often times we use it for a site where we don't use the blog feature. It's a good choice for a professional person such as lawyer, photographer, labor trades, and of course writers. We find WordPress an ideal choice for fun websites that won't have many users.
Joomla! is the second most popular content management systems used today. Approximately 9.2% of the world's websites that use a CMS use Joomla! With Joomla! you can build web sites and powerful online applications. It's ease of use and extensibility have made Joomla! the best choice for most small businesses. Examples are corporate websites or portals, intranets, extranets, online magazines, newspapers, publications, e-commerce, online reservations, non-profit and organizational web sites, community based portals, school and church web sites.
Joomla! is an "industrial strength" system that is easy for users to understand and work with. It is the perfect choice for integrating an e-commerce solution such as Virtue Mart or Magento. If you don't need an e-commerce solution that complicated then there are many others to choose from. Contact us to discuss Joomla! in more detail.
Drupal is the third most popular CMS in use today. It accounts for approximately 6.7% of all websites that use a CMS. Drupal is an "interesting" product. It has a following of very dedicated devotees. It may very well be the more sophisticated of the the three top CMS systems and, perhaps, that is what keeps it from being more widely adapted. Those who spend some of each day working with a CMS find it easy enough to work with but those who just want a website and simply want to make the occasional update find Drupal more difficult to learn and work with. The bottom line for us is if you have a staff and can have someone devote some time to learning Drupal then this is a good solution. If not then choose one of the other two.