So you want to create a website, but you don’t know where to begin? Creating a site takes careful planning and consideration.
Start by identifying what it is that you want your site for. Is it for showcasing your personal or professional achievements? Is it for selling your businesses products or services? Is it a social networking site that involves complex interactive features? Or is it simply a blog, or a site for information purposes. Understanding the end goal of your website will lead you to which of the following platforms will best meet your requirements.
There are many 3rd party content management systems available, for a variety of different price ranges. Here are some of the most popular content management systems and why people choose to use them over other platforms. Each CMS is recommended to be installed and customized by a professional web development company. The more custom you need specific database functionality or features of your website, the more you should look at using fully custom content management system rather than the ones mentioned below.
Wordpress, an open source tool, is considered by some to be the most user-friendly content management system that has fully customizable templates. Perfect for small or large websites that require standard features and functionality. Large online community with thousands of feature plugins with one click installs.
Drupal is an open source platform that is supported and developed by an online community of people all over the world. The content management platform is highly customizable, but can be quite technical for non-developers. Drupal only offers the head start for building your site. After that, it’s about how much you can fill in the gaps to make it look professional.
Joomla is another popular, open source platform for website development. With thousands of templates and extensions, it is a user friendly tool that also accommodates first-timers, with support from over 200,000 international community members. Great for large content driven sites, like state agencies.
Expression Engine is a extremely powerful content management framework that is perfect for complex database driven websites and web applications. It is a agile open source framework that is based on the flexible CodeIgniter core. With ExpressionEngine a you can create anything from beautiful content driven websites to feature rich business web applications. Thousands of companies use EllisLab software as the platform of choice
Shopify allows you to easily create a customized online ecommerce store by choosing from professional themes that are easy to tailor to your requirements. The content management platform uses a simple templating language called ‘Liquid’ that allows you to customize everything about your website. The best part of the platform is that every piece of HTML and CSS is in your hands. You can customize it as you wish.
There are many other platforms that are regularly used, such as Wix, Cushy CMS, TextPattern, Radiant CMS, Alfresco, SilverStripe, and TYPOlight. But if content management systems are not your strong point, then contact us at Custom Software Lab, and let our team of technical experts assist you in creating a user friendly, fully functional website or business web application.
