CMS Systems

[GreGorGy]

Disclaimer: I think CMS systems are utter tiresome pieces of rubbish that serve only the egos of luddites who want to replace real IT skills with their own bloated website ideas.


I have a client whose website I designed about a year or so ago. She has been approached by some or other company selling her this CMS snake oil - "You too can modify anything on your website anytime you want."

I have seen the likes of Joomla and Mambo and my impression is that these systems allow you to choose from an (admittedly large) array of templates. Then you put your logo here and your page here and your favourite band here.

A custom, specific and detailed design that looks nothing like those arrays seems to be not possible. Is this correct? I have no problem with moving the website to the CMS developers. I will dump the entire site, source code and all, onto disk for them without issue. I am not attached emotionally at all.

What I need to know though, to advise my client properly, is whether or not my assumptions are correct. Can these CMSes work on any template or design? Are they restricted to the available, customisable templates? Are CMSes any good at all? Am I being silly?

 

[midrange]

A custom, specific and detailed design that looks nothing like those arrays seems to be not possible. Is this correct?

Incorrect. You can make Joomla/Drupal look any way you want.

 

[semiautomatix]

I have recently designed a website using Wordpress as a simple CMS. I redesigned the default template from the ground up. I even programmed some plugins so I could add an extra flyout menu module.

I have discovered over the years that it is an absolute waste of my time to try and "reinvent the wheel". Someone else has already done the hard work for you, why not use it and modify it further?

 

[guest2013-1]

My question is why isn't her system a "CMS" system yet anyway? I usually do my own custom **** (and it's very basic) so the client can update any pages they'd like.

The design however does not always match with their new ability to create as many menu's as they'd like. So that might **** out royally. Other than that most of my clientele have systems that won't run well with CMS, and those that want, I'd rather assess their needs (future and otherwise) and build something for them that I know is easily extend-able without much hassle

Probably because I'm not 100% confident of my wordpress plugin skills yet

 

[jamezjunk]

I am quite happy with Joomla. For those of us who are not programmers, but like nicely designed sites. it is one of the best options out there.

 

[BelAl]

Joomla and those CMS beauties are easy to manage and configure (to a certain extent) but this comes at a price.

Because everything is done via webforms and a database the website is a cumbersome and heavy application. I put two sites together: ASP version = 1Mb, Joomla version = 7Mb. Same content...

The web traffic (and lets not forget that we pay for it) is intensive on the joomla site because its pushing more bandwidth.

Well you see those webforms ... they're like the ugly side of html.. without the ability to see where your tags start and end and be able to modify and neaten it up (which most end users cant do) the site gets bigger, messier and harder to format.

If the site isn't too intensive say vaia con dios to the old site. But if its a mainstream business that gets numerous hits please tell them to stick to your version.

As another indicator one our previous customers (because we lost them after their second web hosting bill) changed from asp to joomla site. Web traffic increased with a similair amount of hits from 2Gb to 6Gb.

I'll say no more...

 

[chiskop]

A custom, specific and detailed design that looks nothing like those arrays seems to be not possible. Is this correct?

No.

Can these CMSes work on any template or design?

Yes.

Are they restricted to the available, customisable templates?

No.

Are CMSes any good at all?

Yes.

Am I being silly?

Yes.

CMSes aren't always the right way to go, but the very often are. You can modify templates or create your own from the ground up. And it really does make it easier, once the site is set up, for non-technical people to create/edit pages on their site. Joomla Template tutorial.

Like timgaul said, why reinvent the wheel?

Web traffic increased with a similair amount of hits from 2Gb to 6Gb.

Joomla itself doesn't use any extra bandwidth - the user requests a page and that page is served to them. Perhaps the template you were using had a heavier page-weight? Sure, you do require a db, and there is communication between the app and the db, but that is almost always on the same server.

 

[semiautomatix]

Joomla and those CMS beauties are easy to manage and configure (to a certain extent) but this comes at a price.

Because everything is done via webforms and a database the website is a cumbersome and heavy application. I put two sites together: ASP version = 1Mb, Joomla version = 7Mb. Same content...

The web traffic (and lets not forget that we pay for it) is intensive on the joomla site because its pushing more bandwidth.

Well you see those webforms ... they're like the ugly side of html.. without the ability to see where your tags start and end and be able to modify and neaten it up (which most end users cant do) the site gets bigger, messier and harder to format.

If the site isn't too intensive say vaia con dios to the old site. But if its a mainstream business that gets numerous hits please tell them to stick to your version.

As another indicator one our previous customers (because we lost them after their second web hosting bill) changed from asp to joomla site. Web traffic increased with a similair amount of hits from 2Gb to 6Gb.

I'll say no more...

This makes no sense. At the end of the day your user is getting fed HTML (maybe with some embedded JavaScript) just like any other web page. The processing is all done server side.

Maybe it'll take longer to render on the server than a static page, but it is negligible.