Hi All, I know this has been done a number of times but through I would put the feeler out again to see if there were any new thoughts (had a look through the posts for the last 3 years).
I am having to evaluate which CSM the company I am working for is going to select and use for their own site redevelopment and then for any work they do for clients that might fall into a more complex development in the future. The company makes accounting software but has recently been using zen cart with custom code to integrate the accounting software product web management (eg product info and images for a site) with e-commerse sites they are doing for clients. Web development is not their core business but is becoming a required addition. In saying that the CSM choice may not actually be a replacement for zen cart but who knows, make sense to learn one and use it for both. I have been reading a book called "Choosing an Open Source CMS (beginners guide), Nirav Mehta, PACKT publiching" which gives a good process to go through to help someone like me who is not a web designer and has not had much/any experience with OS CMS options, but done a reasonable amount of PHP coding. It recommends some good sites for CMS comparisons and reviews as well as common CMS demo installs you can play with online to get a feel. Demo's http://php.opensourcecms.com CMS comparison: http://www.cmsmatrix.org I suspect that Joomla maybe what they go with as one client already has a site using that and their development requirements are a little more simple for their site redevelopment. The potential gotya is having a client that wants something more complex. Heard lots about Drupal but despite being the most popular also had lots of negative comments and I get the impression the learning time could be restrictive especially considering there is only one person doing this work in-house (me). I had a look at Modx too which I liked the admin area a lot more than Joomla but there are so many more templates and modules in other CMS systems. I am worried about making the recommendation and then hitting a nasty that I had no idea about because in reality you would only know it if you had been working with each one long enough to know. These seem to me to be important: . Learning curve (what if I leave and a new person has to take it over) . Template and module availability (yep plenty for the big players which is a tick for them) . Support and developers (again big players have plenty of these and Drupal etc is well supported in NZ) . Difficulty installing modules and making modifications to get what we want. . Upgrade impact post modifications (if someone else decides they are going to sometime down the track) . Don't want to crack a walnut with a sledge hammer but also don't want to limit more complex requirements (who knows when that can happen) . Performance issues specific to the CMS, SEO requirements, other really important stuff that is easy to be ignorant of . (suggestions of anything I have missed) Any feedback would be helpful. Cheers Andrew -- NZ PHP Users Group: http://groups.google.com/group/nzphpug To post, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected]
