Picking Your Platform – Whats Best For Your Business?

In my experience over the last 5 years, there are four different platforms that most people use for their websites. In reality there are far too many to list, but since the 4 main ones have about 80% of the market in my estimation, I think it’s pretty safe to stick with just these. I’ll be listing them for you along with the pros and cons of each, so that you can make an informed decision before you or your business jumps into the unknown waters of getting online

Wordpress

http://www.wordpress.org/

Wordpress is a lightweight Content Management System (CMS) designed mostly for blogs, but it allows you to update and edit your content on your own. WordPress is a platform that is gaining steam at an alarming rate, and with each new version, it seems to be getting better and better, and in my opinion, is currently the best option for newbies.

WordPress allows you to manage everything from an administrator area, and then publish content to the front of your website. There are also tons of plug-ins available to do all sorts of things from show your latest Twitter status on your sidebar to making your WordPress site a full on community where everyone can interact. For the most part though, the WordPress plug-ins are usually centered on the fact that you probably have a blog, so if you use WordPress for a normal site, most of them may not be of any use to you at all.

Pros:

The upside of WordPress is that its lightweight, it runs good, very few bugs and it is extremely easy to use in the back-end.

Cons:

The downside is that it is really designed for blogs. It can be used for just a normal informational website, and it works pretty well, but if you’re trying to get creative and go crazy with the design, WordPress isn’t really for you, unless you want to spend a LOT of money.

Tips:

It is REALLY easy to set up a wordpress site. Don’t get discouraged by thinking its too complicated, its not. I might just write a simple tutorial on this site to walk you through it. You can also go to www.wordpress.org and set up a wordpress hosted site, and it will display as yourname.wordpress.com …but if you’re setting this up for a business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Joomla

http://www.joomla.org

Joomla Is a CMS just like WordPress, except it is designed for bigger heavier sites…Meaning it can do a lot more but it’s bigger and bulkier. With Joomla, there really is no limit to what you can do, there are plug-ins for everything under the sun, and it is really built for a site that wants to go above and beyond just sharing text content.

Like WordPress, Joomla has tons of plug-ins, but they are more aimed at the general area of websites…meaning they don’t target just blog users. There are a lot more plug-ins for Joomla, and they tend to be more versatile then the WordPress counterparts.

Pros:

Joomla is really really powerful, and there are tons of plug-ins (extensions) available on the Joomla website. You can pretty much do anything with Joomla. It’s great for non-coders too, because chances are there is a plug-in to do just what you need. Extensions have lots of customization too, but that can be a con depending on how you look at it.

Cons:

Although it’s pretty easy to set up, it is still less user friendly than WordPress. It is also a bit more difficult to set up and configure things…I mean everything pretty much works out of the box, but every extension and plug-in usually has lots of customization, which for the beginner is intimidating.

Tips:

If you decide to take the plunge and and install Joomla, sign up for their forum…its a great help and the users are pretty helpful most of the time.

Drupal

http://drupal.org/

I’m going to be straight up with you, I dont have a lot of experience with Drupal, but the little bit I do I can tell you a few things that will be helpful. Drupal, like Joomla is built for very dynamic sites…and like the comparison with Joomla Vs. WordPress, Drupal is more advanced than Joomla, but the trade off is in the learning curve. Drupal is a lot more difficult for beginner to wrap their head around, but once you get the hand of learning to use it, it is extremely powerful.

Pros:

The upside of Drupal is that there are literally multiple ways to do everything, and it is extremely customizable. You can have multiple templates, tons of different content arranged however you want, but all of that comes with a price.

Cons:

Drupal, as mentioned above, is really hard to wrap your head around in the beginning, and for those without patience or the time to learn, I would stray away from it. In my experience is really built for the developers that have advanced knowledge or at least are somewhat versed in how the internet works.

Static HTML / CSS

http://www.w3.org/

HTML isn’t really a platform…its a type of coding (stands for Hyper Test Markup Language), but there are a lot of plain HTML and CSS (cascading Style Sheets…used to set colors and stuff) websites out there. When an HTML site is made from scratch, there is usually a graphic designer and a coder (sometimes they can be the same person). The graphic designer would design the site in a program like Adobe Photoshop, and then most of the time, the coder would take that image, slice it up into sections, and actually code the images and text into an HTML file, which your browser then renders as a website.

Pros:

The upside of an HTML site is that you have complete control over how to position things, and there really is no limit to what you can do design wise…

Cons:

It can be expensive to higher a designer to design your site. I’ve been in the web design biz for a while and I’ve always done both the code and design stuff, but in my opinion, coding is a lot easier. I can literally take a design in Photoshop and in an hour have a great looking HTML site working perfectly. Design can take me 5 or 6 hours….Of course – I THINK in code, so know that thats what I’m better at…I’m sure there is a designer out there that feels the other way and I’m sure they can dish out a design faster then you can say they can’t. Keep that in mind.

The other downside is that most people don’t feel comfortable editing code, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have the first clue how to find the file, open it correctly to edit, and then save it and put it back on the website. So the truth is, most people settle for having a web developer edit it, and that can get expensive. In reality, if you need to just edit text, it’s really not that hard at all…and I’ll be showing you how to do so a little bit later in one of my beginners tutorials.

Tips:

If you are going to have someone design a website, get it all done at one place! Without mentioning the obvious financial advantages, I can tell you from personal experience that when the designer and coder are working together (or if they are the same person in my case), the end result is usually a lot nicer then if you hired them separately one after another. Simple things the designer does can save a lot of time when its the coders turn…and in extreme cases some designs are EXTREMELY hard to implement certain things that you wouldn’t even think twice about.

Overview

So as you’ve read, there are a ton of different options out there…and when it comes to your business, you need to be sure that you’ve picked the right one, otherwise you could spend a lot of money and resources and get minimal results.

There is no one perfect solution, all of these platforms have their pros and cons. As a web developer, I am often asked which is best, and I will now refer people to this article when I hear that. If a client comes to me and says I want an e-commerce site, or a site that does X, I will most likely set them up with Joomla…If a client on the other hand tells me they just want in informational site or blog that they can edit themselves, I’ll set them up with WordPress.

So, just in case you’ve skimmed this entire article (it’s lonnnngggg, I know), I’ve put together a a quick glance guide to the differnces of each platform below.

 
So, what do you guys think?

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