Content Management System which one do you use

[trebor8]

Hi
I've been fiddling about with Wordpress and I just don't like it.
Quite a few years ago i had a site run on Silverstripe cms and I really came to love it, especially because of it's functionality - I got very use to it

This time round I fancy Joomla. It might be overkill for the early stages of a new website but I'm hoping to grow. What I've been reading Joomla sounds quite intuitive

What do you guys think? what do you use and why please

Thanks for any input

 

[ryedale]

Well we've used Joomla for client sites for nearly a decade and know it inside out.

Wordpress is always assumed to be the easier CMS but we generally find that once we have done an initial training session, clients rarely need Joomla support and we've used it in some of the largest schools in the country with some very technophobe staff !

Everyone has their favourites though and different CMSs serve different purposes. Wordpress is more user friendly for add-ons and updates but I find Joomla far better to develop bespoke solutions for

 

[webhostuk]

Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal are some of the top used CMS each one has its own advantages and disadvantages it depends on the end user requirement and knowledge to feel the ease of using it, wp is famous due to its simplicity.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi,

What didn't you like about WordPress?

It can have an initial period of getting used to how they do things, and that it's setup as a blog by default, but there are plenty of good tutorials out there - and it's generally a mature, easy to use and incredibly popular (so great for plugins), system.

Personally we've used WordPress for smaller sites, even for eCommerce with WooCommerce, and tended toward Drupal for larger sites, and OpenCart for eCommerce websites.

I always felt Drupal sat a bit needlessly in the middle. It doesn't have the scale or scope of Drupal, and lacks of ease of use of WordPress.

Having said that, Drupal - with Drupal 8 has now gone fully into an Enterprise direction.
Think the Economist website (which runs on Drupal), rather than also smaller websites.

Backdrop CMS is a CMS that's meant to fill the gap left by Drupal's full enterprise direction.

But if you think Joomla may be overkill, then many of the alternatives are only more so, so you may be better off with WordPress, or Joomla as you say if you don't like WordPress.

You might find this useful:
http://websitesetup.org/cms-comparison-wordpress-vs-joomla-drupal/

Joomla popularity has dropped over the years compared to WordPress etc.
http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Joomla!

I hope that helps.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

[ryedale]

What are your plans for the site - that can go a long way towards deciding which is the best option really?

 

[fisicx]

The best CMS is the one that best meets your needs.

There are loads to choose from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Indeed, although that's a big list. It helps to know the differences and relative popularity of different systems.

But they're both good points.

First work out what you want to achieve.
Then find a CMS that will best allow to do that.

That wiki list reminds me of how many good and interesting options there are though. Concrete5 and Exponent CMS to name just two.

SilverStripe is still going, so you can always try it again.

Most web hosts provide a one click installer so you can quickly try out a few options, and see what you get on with best.

Softaculous, which is generally considered the best one click installer, is also a great place to start for choosing a platform:
https://www.softaculous.com/apps/cms

You can try the demos and read the reviews.

 

[fisicx]

I play with ghost on and off and craft seems to be gaining in popularity.

As you say @Dan_HiHosting, a lot depends on your needs.

 

[fisicx]

Don't use Yoast. It may be popular but it's bloated and mostly redundant. In fact avoid using any plugins if possible. Google will thank you for doing so.

 

[threenine]

Going to way in here with the typical consultant reply.

"It depends ....." and in this case it is what exactly do you want to do with your CMS ?

Are you looking to start just a content distribution portal, personal blog, e-commerce store, Mobile API?

What do't you like about WordPress?

 

[Faevilangel]

Don't use Yoast. It may be popular but it's bloated and mostly redundant. In fact avoid using any plugins if possible. Google will thank you for doing so.

disagree, yoast makes doing the seo stuff for WP sites so easy, it makes seo easy to understand for my clients and is regularly updated

 

[Paul Norman]

We use the CMS built and marketed by our sister company.

 

[fisicx]

disagree, yoast makes doing the seo stuff for WP sites so easy, it makes seo easy to understand for my clients and is regularly updated

Most of Yoast is pointless. The only bit you really need is page titles and descriptions. Everything else is just fluff. The traffic lights for example are pointless, I've got pages at the top of Google that yoast gives a red light to.

 

[Faevilangel]

Most of Yoast is pointless. The only bit you really need is page titles and descriptions. Everything else is just fluff. The traffic lights for example are pointless, I've got pages at the top of Google that yoast gives a red light to.

they are tips for increasing your potential rankings, I don't pay any attention to the traffic lights but my clients love them as it gives them an idea on how they could improve the website. It's like asking for website feedback but on an seo point of view. Yoast is far from bloated, imho it's a vital plugin for any WP website.

 

[fisicx]

All you really need is the means to edit page titles and descriptions. All SEO plugins do this. Yoast is way down the list of really good plugins. Did you know for example Yoast parses every page twice. It scans the page server side which adds considerable load on a busy site.

 

[threenine]

I would just add about Yoast etc.

It's the same old argument, what are you looking to achieve, where are you now, what help do you need.

I use yoast on a number of my sites,

why? When starting a new site and writing content for that site, I do find it useful as it provides me pointers along the way of what I need to do to improve my content. As my sites get busier I do tend to uninstall it.

Why? I am currently finding that I much prefer to use the WordPress Desktop app to do all my publishing so I seldom log directly on the website to write content these days, so it's pointless having a content review plugin, I am not on the server.

why? We have developed our own content assist tools internally, to help with context of content, not perfect but they are cms platform independent.

We sometimes leave yoast on the sites , to help new authors who are not using our pltaform etc to write content.

I appreciate that Yoast is not perfect, but for the most part it is free, so as with most wordpress plugins you can't really complain about them until you actually pay your money.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

If you're not coding for WordPress then Yoast is an essential plugin... it does have some fluff in there but is mainly useful... the sitemaps it generates are great, you get excellent pointers when writing pages and post... the points it gives you won't magically get you to the top of Google but it provides reminders for simple mistakes like missing alt tags off images, and placing keywords in the correct places. it also makes life easier when writing meta data.

That being said, herein lies the problem with WP... You need plugins just to get some basic SEO functionality. Plus it's heavily targeted by spammers and attackers.

 

[Alan]

Yoast ins't essential - it is one of many SEO plugins.

My personal favourite of the day is 'The SEO Framework'

Back to the original subject

the first big question is 'do you actually need a CMS' ( a different variation on the same questions - it depends ) but the starting point shouldn't actually be 'What CMS' but 'What do I need'

 

[fisicx]

the sitemaps it generates are great.

And you need a sitemap because?

If the site is already indexed and you have good internal navigation a sitemap is redundant.

Yoast has a LOT of fluff. And it's resource hungry, it can really slow down a busy site (because it loads every page in the background to gather data).

 

[Alan]

You need a site map obviously, because you have loads of widowed pages that are not accessible by navigation or any other links.

Surely you know how to build broken websites as well as good ones ?

 

[Xtm_Mike]

Yoast ins't essential - it is one of many SEO plugins.

My personal favourite of the day is 'The SEO Framework'

Back to the original subject

the first big question is 'do you actually need a CMS' ( a different variation on the same questions - it depends ) but the starting point shouldn't actually be 'What CMS' but 'What do I need'

Sorry I should have re-phrased that -- A plugin like Yoast SEO is essential (i.e. an SEO plugin).

And you need a sitemap because?

If the site is already indexed and you have good internal navigation a sitemap is redundant.

Yoast has a LOT of fluff. And it's resource hungry, it can really slow down a busy site (because it loads every page in the background to gather data).

A sitemap will improve the crawling of a website and potentially get it indexed faster, the first thing I do after finishing a website is add it to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap, not only will it get it indexed faster but it also shows me the status of the index, how many pages indexed verses submitted, any errors, etc.. I'd say it's essential for a new website, or very big websites.

A website can survive just fine without it, but why would you not use the tools that Google gives you for free? You have no control over Googles crawler, this just helps you point it in the right direction.

These aren't my words, they are Googles words.

As for WordPress..Almost every single plugin loads on every page load, not just Yoast, along with the theme and everything else, WordPress' design in general just simply awful. If you follow their guidelines and get everything perfect and cache the ass off it then it should be fine, but it's not for the faint hearted - Myself and another developer work on it daily for a hugely popular well known website and we both can't stand it.

 

[camers]

Removed

 

[Scott@Tracto]

Are you saying Yoast is resource hungry on just the server side? How about running WP on it's own dedicated server that has PHP/Apache optimised, perhaps with NGINX/Varnish?

I am running a site on WP at the moment and have many clients that do this but not sure what they use for SEO. I am looking at using something soon for a new site.. so, what do you recommend instead of Yoast?

In regards to spamming/security on WP - make sure your contact forms have captcha and change default administrator logins/database names/admin URL. Hide any references to WP or the theme used within the code also.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

Are you saying Yoast is resource hungry on just the server side? How about running WP on it's own dedicated server that has PHP/Apache optimised, perhaps with NGINX/Varnish?

I am running a site on WP at the moment and have many clients that do this but not sure what they use for SEO. I am looking at using something soon for a new site.. so, what do you recommend instead of Yoast?

In regards to spamming/security on WP - make sure your contact forms have captcha and change default administrator logins/database names/admin URL. Hide any references to WP or the theme used within the code also.

I use Yoast on almost every single WordPress site I develop... WordPress in general is resource hungry with lots of plugins installed.. Yoast is the least of your problems. I've never had any specific problems with Yoast. The "It does stuff on every page load" argument doesn't stand because every single plugin re-loads on page load. It is essential to have good caching for WP to reduce the amount of work it needs to do.

 

[fisicx]

A sitemap will improve the crawling of a website and potentially get it indexed faster, the first thing I do after finishing a website is add it to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap, not only will it get it indexed faster but it also shows me the status of the index, how many pages indexed verses submitted, any errors, etc.. I'd say it's essential for a new website, or very big websites.

And when you create the sitemap, how much time and effort do you place in setting the priority of each page? Get this wrong and you can harm you ranking. But it's not essential. I've launched many sites and had them indexed within a few hours.

Are you saying Yoast is resource hungry on just the server side? How about running WP on it's own dedicated server that has PHP/Apache optimised, perhaps with NGINX/Varnish?

It's server side mostly. Dedicated servers and other setting can improve things but

what do you recommend instead of Yoast?

The one I built myself: https://quick-plugins.com/free-things/no-fuss-seo/

Page titles and the description is about the only thing you need to add to a WP site. I don't even use the plugin, I just add the code to functions.php

 

[Xtm_Mike]

And when you create the sitemap, how much time and effort do you place in setting the priority of each page? Get this wrong and you can harm you ranking. But it's not essential. I've launched many sites and had them indexed within a few hours.

Not very long at all. If using a CMS like WP it's mainly automated.

I tend to stay away though because I hate the fact you need to use a plugin for everything, I prefer to code myself... not the WP way.

 

[Faevilangel]

sorry graham but disagree, clients want more than just the ttile and description, they want the social sharing, they want the analysis and they also want sitemaps (as seo companies keep telling them they need them).

One of my cleints rely on facebook to generate sales (through sharing) and your plugin would be useless as they can't generate and optimise their og image and text for facebook shares.

Yoast is "loaded" but most of it is needed, i run numerous wp sites and not 1 has any issues with yoast being slow.

 

[fisicx]

And if that's what people want then that's fine. But we both know sitemaps aren't needed and the traffic lights aren't very good. Social sharing isn't an SEO thing and easily added to a theme. However, if Yoast works for you and your clients that's all good, it's just not necessary as has been suggested.

 

[fisicx]

To add to the above. Yoast will not slow down the page load speed. What it does do is load up the server, every page get called twice along wil all the scripts. If you have a busy server it adds a lot of unnecessary load. It's the only SEO plugin that does this and can cause a lot of conflicts with other plugins.

 

[Amit Shah]

As all recommendation, I also with Wordpress. You can easily find benefits of wordpress on internet, most important thing you can easily find supported plugin for any requirements.

 

[fisicx]

Sigh....

Do not use plugin unless there is no alternative. Where possible build the functionality into the theme. Plugins will affect performance and many are so badly built they cause considerable degradation.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

If you want to try something different give Bolt CMS a go.

You do need some very, very basic development skills but mainly just for editing configuration, and there are some benefits to WP but in my opinion bolt is better.

 

[trebor8]

Hi

Thank you all for your considered advice.
I'm with fisicx regarding the plugins. It's not really that I don't like WP, I just liked using Silverstripe much much more.

Could I ask another question, what would be a good CMS fto use or when I'd like to implement an Ad campaign - a bit like you see on this page (but not as bad LOL)