Comments on: CMS or Bespoke web site builds?

By: slee

slee — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:13:35 +0000

Thank you for your comments.
Do you think using a Open Source solution is good for a commercial company? Should they be developing their own or does it not matter where you work? I know not so long ago IBM started using Drupal so i guess more are taking the step into Open Source.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:04:42 +0000

Nice post, yes, I am all the way Open Source because it is scalable and you have control over it vs a paid version of a CMS. I have used many, including WP, Joomla and some not so known CMS and they all seem to fit my customer’s requirements.

Yes, updating can be a drag because of security issues but if you take few hours and learn on how to update your CMS to the current version you would see that it is not that difficult.

Best,
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By: SarahG

SarahG — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:17:07 +0000

It’s a good question. Personally I think it depends on the client’s needs and budget. In the short term, WordPress can provide a good quick solution along with a few custom written plugins to enhance it, but as you say, it still needs an upgrade every so often (not that often really. Before 2.6, the last version out was April, so about 10 weeks, that’s not too bad, at least they’re on the ball!).

With a bespoke solution, yes you can make it unique, you can design the admin to fit in with the site (although you can do your own CSS for the WP admin too), but generally an update isn’t necessarily needed every couple of months. However if you base the admin and the whole site on a pre-existing CMS, which most developers do after a while, using a standard framework and build on that, then as you find bugs and issues yourself theoretically all the sites using your bespoke CMS need upgrading.

So at the end of the day either option should be kept up to date, and the OS solution at least has some of the best developers working on it, bugs are found pretty quickly and enhancements are always being made. With a bespoke solution, you’re limited to yourself / your team, and bugs are easier to miss when only a couple of dozen people are using it. Plus you need to charge more for it which can put off some clients.

So if I can, I use WordPress, simply due to its flexibility and capabilities, plus I can extend it with plugins easily. Otherwise it’s bespoke solutions, providing the client’s budget will stretch to it!