07.19.08
Team-Logic CMS - Better than Drupal
There are many Content Management Systems (CMS) software packages on the market if you want to manage your own website content. Some are very inexpensive or free, and other enterprise CMS suites can cost over $100K. Delaware.Net offers our own system, called Team-Logic. It is neither costly nor free, and it is incredibly powerful but still easy to use. Prices start at $50 per month for the whole system.
There ARE cheaper open source solutions out there, and on the low end you have systems like Drupal, PHPNuke, PostNuke, .netNuke, Joomla, and others. These can be made to work if you have the time and patience, but for the most part they are solutions for non-profits and companies that don’t want to spend a lot on their website design work. I would never recommend them for a growing business that really cares about their website. Especially if they don’t have an in-house IT team. These low-end systems are well suited for a website where it is OK to use design templates for someone that wants to get up and running quickly. But there WILL be problems when using these systems, and like everything else - there is a trade-off.
Quality, Speed, and Cost - Choose Two!
If you go with a low-end CMS system, it might be fast to setup, and the price might be right, but your website will be a low-quality website. And if you factor in the time to customize it, that could then get expensive in a hurry.
Care should be taken to avoid a web design firm that charges a premium price for custom website development, then they turn around and install Drupal or some other low-end open system for their CMS solution. This is a way that a web desing firm can cut corners, and it is lying. We would never do this.
Another problem with the low-end open solutions is that they are higher profile targets for hackers. There are many examples of this that you can search for that show Drupal getting hacked, and other systems getting hacked. This is usually quite preventable if the systems are updated in a very regular manner, but the fact of the matter is that web desing companies that outsource their IT and hosting needs are much more likely to NOT update these systems. They build websites using these systems so that they can get them live quickly and turn a profit, but then the site (and the customer) gets neglected. This problem extends beyond CMS systems - it is also true of forum software and blog software.
Am I against open-source software? Heck no. We have our share of open-source software that we use at Delaware.Net, but there IS a trend away from it almost across the board, from operating systems to web development software, to application server software. Open source software is great if it is patched regularly, and if it meets a particular need. But sadly, most companies don’t do a very good job of updating.
Some folks assume that open-source software is somehow better because it is free and open, but this is just not true. To me, it is irresponsible for a web development firm to perpetuate that myth. Open source solutions shouldn’t be viewed as a software religion, they have to make business sense too. And when you actually track the time that it takes to make some open software work correctly, you find that it doesn’t always save you money in the long run. You also might be missing out on integration with your other business systems. Customers looking for a “quick and dirty” way to deploy and manage their websites might do OK with some of these solutions, but “quick and dirty” isn’t what our company is about.
So, you can go cheap with your CMS solution, or you can get one that is more custom to your needs, integrates with a nice custom design, and that doesn’t force you to log into three different interfaces to get your work done. And best of all your site will work better, and it will come up high in search engines.
Another advantage of our systems over other CMS systems is that ours is updated every month, with updates being seamless and free. Try geting your open-source system updated for free indefinitely by your hosting company (it doesn’t happen).
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