CMS recommendations - advice – discussion

nin9abadga

nin9abadga

nin9abadga

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Joined
9 Jan 2006
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1,440
Location
Nottingham
Hi everyone

I'm currently looking for a new CMS system/provider for our business website. We currently use a proprietary system from a local supplier, and whilst it is OK atm it's not flexible enough to accommodate what we need for the future. So we're on the lookout for a new solution.

We have fairly complicated requirements (but I don't think they’re unusual). In essence they are as follows:

  • We need control over design and layout without the need to go back through agencies to get the work done
  • 3 independent sections, with differing nav, designs & layout
  • Multi-language support (Chinese, Japanese and Korean plus European)
  • Then everything else – customisable forms, good SEO tools, content gating etc etc

Budget is really not fixed atm – for the right solution we’ll invest.

Searching produced loads of results, so my question to you guys is what do you use/have you used in the past/currently? Is it a good system? If you were to pick one now which would you choose? I’ll look at anything you suggest!

Any ideas or thoughts would be welcome :)

(Maybe if we get a good list together we can make it a resource or something – or if there is such thread already pointing in the right direction would be good!)

Cheers
 
As above, Wordpress sounds like what your after if you want a tool, If you want a provider to do it for you then I have no idea. I prefer Joomla as a CMS but I get the impression your looking for something as simple to use as possible?
 
hey all thanks for the replies.

the reason we want control over design/layout is that as a company we change our minds very quickly! unfortunately there's not really anything I can do about that so we need to be able to react to change - as it currently stands, we have some design ideas, go to agency, they implement, we tweak, eventually finalise then go live. all of which takes time and money. we'd rather be able to design it, finalise, go live in a week rather than 4 for example.

as another example, if we want any changes made to the headers (jquery script adding etc) we can't do it without going back to the agency. same with tracking code at the bottom of the pages, general colour scheme changes, home page links etc. it gets a bit frustrating!

I'm using wordpress atm for setting up our blog (using the suffusion templates which i can highly recommend). I'm not sure it can really do what we're after - 3 completely different looks - can it do that? I've made a single layout look good, can I do multiple from the same install?

We have looked at Druple, Joomla and Plone in the past - I have to say I didn't get on with any of them! I found Plone horrendously complicated and a little limited in terms of layout customisation, whilst Druple and Joomla were so infuriating it hurt my face.

I'll look at the systems mentioned and see how they are. I'm also looking at something called episerver.

thanks again guys, keep them coming!
 
webhound said:
ModX is a great CMS although by the sounds of it Wordpress would suit your needs. Joomla is a pile of crap btw!
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I think to say you don't like Joomla is fair but to call it a pile of crap is a little sensationalist its second only to Wordpress in terms of proliferation and is used by some pretty big corporate players.
 
Wordpress. It's so easy to chop up and play with, and has a gold mine of plugins. I build into Wordpress for every client's website now.
 
I call it a pile of crap because that's my opinion of it, of which i'm entitled to. And maybe some pretty big corporate players do use it but that doesn't make it any less 'crap'.
No doubt there's more big corporate players using shoddy software than not due to bad advice or the time and expense required to move over to better software.
 
webhound said:
I call it a pile of crap because that's my opinion of it, of which i'm entitled to. And maybe some pretty big corporate players do use it but that doesn't make it any less 'crap'.
No doubt there's more big corporate players using shoddy software than not due to bad advice or the time and expense required to move over to better software.
Click to expand...

Of course your entitled to an opinion, its just usual to quantify them otherwise they have no value. I'm sure you would ask the same of someone if they said ModX was a pile of crap directly after you suggested you liked it, otherwise its just trolling.
 
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You could probably use WordPress, but if you want to change design / layout aspects yourself your best bet will be learning some simply HTML / CSS.

+ 1 Joomla is terrible.
 
I don't think you will be able to make quick changes to any CMS unless its just changing text.

Depending on how often you change the site, have you thought about hiring a web developer to work inhouse instead?
 
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