Bespoke or OS CMS?

[CheekyC]

So this webdev is proposing to build me a new website. He suggests using his own php based CMS over the common ones.
I am skeptical because the OS puts lots of energy into CMSs and I question to what extent his bespoke CMS is immune to the common attacks. The question is also to what extent there is quality control over the OS CMSs and all the plugins developed by various contributors.

So which CMS to use? If OS, which ones? I have heard horror stories about WordPress...

 

[deweyzeph]

So this webdev is proposing to build me a new website. He suggests using his own php based CMS over the common ones.
I am skeptical because the OS puts lots of energy into CMSs and I question to what extent his bespoke CMS is immune to the common attacks. The question is also to what extent there is quality control over the OS CMSs and all the plugins developed by various contributors.

So which CMS to use? If OS, which ones? I have heard horror stories about WordPress...

It's not even debatable. Use one of the opensource CMS frameworks, don't touch someone's bespoke CMS with a barge pole! There's no way one guy's CMS is going to be better than a CMS maintained by a whole ecosystem of developers. Which one you go for depends on whether you are going for Linux or Windows hosting.

 

[Capdase]

Rolling your own is imo a very bad idea. There are plenty of CMS frameworks and tools out there, just go to do a bit of research as to which one suits your purpose.

Considering the amount of plugins and support WordPress has hopefully that outweighs the horror stories!

 

[Fulcrum29]

It's not even debatable. Use one of the opensource CMS frameworks, don't touch someone's bespoke CMS with a barge pole! There's no way one guy's CMS is going to be better than a CMS maintained by a whole ecosystem of developers. Which one you go for depends on whether you are going for Linux or Windows hosting.

I agree with this, stay with what is supported in the long run. The larger and active the community, the less headaches to deal with maintaining the CMS.

 

[kissingmybbgoodbye]

It is this web developers trick to get you roped into his system which he knows, and nobody else. So if you want to leave him for whatever reason it will be difficult. All the other Open Source systems there are plenty of people who can take over support if needed. Fire your webdev now.

 

[Paul Bedford]

It is this web developers trick to get you roped into his system which he knows, and nobody else. So if you want to leave him for whatever reason it will be difficult. All the other Open Source systems there are plenty of people who can take over support if needed. Fire your webdev now.

Agree 100%

 

[shauntir]

Do yourself a favour and don't get a custom made CMS.

If you're a .Net and Windows kinda guy, I recommend Orchard CMS. If you don't mind PHP, I recommend Drupal.

Both are built on top of web frameworks - Orchard uses ASP.Net MVC and Drupal uses Symfony. So you can have plenty of developers extending your CMS if need be.

 

[deweyzeph]

Do yourself a favour and don't get a custom made CMS.

If you're a .Net and Windows kinda guy, I recommend Orchard CMS. If you don't mind PHP, I recommend Drupal.

Both are built on top of web frameworks - Orchard uses ASP.Net MVC and Drupal uses Symfony. So you can have plenty of developers extending your CMS if need be.

I would also recommend Umbraco for .NET, great CMS with great community support.

 

[chopsky]

Sorry, but find a new developer.

 

[CheekyC]

OK thanks yes this is what I was thinking. It seems that with his CMS new article have to be 'coded'. So much for it being a CMS :/

SO what is the best/better Linux CMS? Currently use Joomla....

 

[Thor]

OK thanks yes this is what I was thinking. It seems that with his CMS new article have to be 'coded'. So much for it being a CMS :/

SO what is the best/better Linux CMS? Currently use Joomla....

Joomla is pretty much as good as it gets I'd say.

And for E-commerce I like Prestashop

 

[[)roi(]]

Personally I hate CMS: they don't scale very well (slow), then throw into the mix the multitude of known & unknown attack vectors, complexity of maintaining a DBMS and you have a recipe for reoccurring problems.

If you're not a technophobe I'd suggest you look at jekyll; which is essentially a static site generator with most of the plugin diversity of CMS solutions; end result is no DBMS, no known attack vectors, simple solution and fast.

 

[deweyzeph]

Joomla is pretty much as good as it gets I'd say.

And for E-commerce I like Prestashop

Drupal is way better than Joomla. Silverstripe and Concrete5 are also great PHP-based CMSes especially if you want 100% control over your HTML and don't want funny stuff to be injected into your HTML like Wordpress does.

 

[Thor]

Drupal is way better than Joomla. Silverstripe and Concrete5 are also great PHP-based CMSes especially if you want 100% control over your HTML and don't want funny stuff to be injected into your HTML like Wordpress does.

Drupal is not something the average guy would use its way to advance and massively more complex compared to Joomla.

WordPress too easy too weak
Joomla middel ground
Drupal well if you have a experience Dev building it then yea but not you on your own, and by you I am referring to the website owner not the technical expert who is a php boss.

 

[Thor]

Personally I hate CMS: they don't scale very well (slow), then throw into the mix the multitude of known & unknown attack vectors, complexity of maintaining a DBMS and you have a recipe for reoccurring problems.

If you're not a technophobe I'd suggest you look at jekyll; which is essentially a static site generator with most of the plugin diversity of CMS solutions; end result is no DBMS, no known attack vectors, simple solution and fast.

OMG, what an amazing time to be alive in.

Definitely looking into this jekyll. Thanks so much.

 

[[)roi(]]

OMG, what an amazing time to be alive in.

Definitely looking into this jekyll. Thanks so much.

Cool.
Initially it can seem a bit daunting re. http://jekyllrb.com is presented as being very programmer oriented, however the installation, application of themes and posting is simple enough for almost any tech able person to get work.

Hosting options are easy, as it doesn't need any of the stuff required by CMS. All you need is a static site hosting solution & FTP and you're up and running.

Plus if you like free; github hosts jekyll websites for free (excluding of course the costs for a custom domain name). Only limitation is that github doesn't allow active plugins, but this is simply overcome by running the static site generator locally and git syncing the generated result.

Example of site on github.com
What I tend to do is host a local instance of jekyll, and run the automatic static site generator; that way I can locally check that I am happy with the changes before synching to git. Simple solution, which just works.

For end users i.e. the non techie folk, all the articles are compiled using Markdown syntax http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ which is simple and easy to learn, and you can also find a few editors, for example:
http://www.sublimetext.com with this jekyll oriented addin https://github.com/23maverick23/sublime-jekyll

 

[CheekyC]

Cool.
Initially it can seem a bit daunting re. http://jekyllrb.com is presented as being very programmer oriented, however the installation, application of themes and posting is simple enough for almost any tech able person to get work.

Hosting options are easy, as it doesn't need any of the stuff required by CMS. All you need is a static site hosting solution & FTP and you're up and running.

Plus if you like free; github hosts jekyll websites for free (excluding of course the costs for a custom domain name). Only limitation is that github doesn't allow active plugins, but this is simply overcome by running the static site generator locally and git syncing the generated result.

Example of site on github.com
What I tend to do is host a local instance of jekyll, and run the automatic static site generator; that way I can locally check that I am happy with the changes before synching to git. Simple solution, which just works.

For end users i.e. the non techie folk, all the articles are compiled using Markdown syntax http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ which is simple and easy to learn, and you can also find a few editors, for example:
http://www.sublimetext.com with this jekyll oriented addin https://github.com/23maverick23/sublime-jekyll

Awesome, I used to use another similar tool but it was discontinued. My issue with CMSs is applying changes on the live site. If I have lots of changes, then it becomes a mission to migrate files and DB changes if you tested offsite. If you just do changes live, then you risk a monumental f-up. I also like the idea of static. The website I intend to build is simple. Just a company site with some articles. Will def check this out

 

[[)roi(]]

Awesome, I used to use another similar tool but it was discontinued. My issue with CMSs is applying changes on the live site. If I have lots of changes, then it becomes a mission to migrate files and DB changes if you tested offsite. If you just do changes live, then you risk a monumental f-up. I also like the idea of static. The website I intend to build is simple. Just a company site with some articles. Will def check this out

It's perfect for that, plus you easily host a local server that works like a CMS by just running "jekyll serve" from terminal / cmd prompt. I.e. Post new articles and you see them instantly on the local site. Once you're happy with the local site; transfer files using an FTP app that compares files for changes, copying only changes.

But it similarly supports a workflow where no immediate changes are applied to the local instance by running "jekyll serve --no-watch"; with manual generation by running "jekyll build".

Backing up is also simple; zip up the folder, everything is stored in simple files, i.e. no SQL and DBMS permissions, ...

Btw I suggest you look at hosting your site on github, as an option aside from it being free you can use their github application for the updates between local and their site (instead of ftp). Look here for details: https://pages.github.com

Oh and if I didn't mention it, you can't beat static for speed, plus proxies love static pages (easily cached); search indexing is so much simpler. Basically what's not to like?

 

[CheekyC]

It's perfect for that, plus you easily host a local server that works like a CMS by just running "jekyll serve" from terminal / cmd prompt. I.e. Post new articles and you see them instantly on the local site. Once you're happy with the local site; transfer files using an FTP app that compares files for changes, copying only changes.

But it similarly supports a workflow where no immediate changes are applied to the local instance by running "jekyll serve --no-watch"; with manual generation by running "jekyll build".

Backing up is also simple; zip up the folder, everything is stored in simple files, i.e. no SQL and DBMS permissions, ...

Btw I suggest you look at hosting your site on github, as an option aside from it being free you can use their github application for the updates between local and their site (instead of ftp). Look here for details: https://pages.github.com

Oh and if I didn't mention it, you can't beat static for speed, plus proxies love static pages (easily cached); search indexing is so much simpler. Basically what's not to like?

Thanks will def look at this. Also no SQL injection/php attacks. I already have the domains, so will just deploy to there.