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Designing Websites With A CMS

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Feb 26.2012

I find almost every customer now wants to be able to update all the content on their site by themselves. I have never customized a WordPress or Drupal site and instead have just created my own CMS for the customer because I figured it would be easier. But I’m thinking it takes too long to do this and I’m just not making enough money.

What do others do? Is WordPress and Drupal the way to go? I’m sure I can learn how to customize those like I was doing my own from scratch, but it just seems like it would be a pain.

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@spufiFeb 26.2012 — Considering how far along both of those tools are, you'll have to have a rather fully developed CMS in order to be equivalent to them or at least close enough to where the difference in time developing what you need is worth it to code your own. Not to say "Screw self coding" but I could see continuing to work on your own CMS until you can get it to where it needs be while using stuff like WP and drupal as need be.

It's interesting. I just looked up a developer form long ago who made his own, switched to WP, and I see his site is now promoting a development company with their own CMS and they got acquired by another company.

http://orderedlist.com/
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@NtrimgsauthorFeb 26.2012 — What is easier to create a custom site around? Wordpress or Drupal?

Most customers just want to change the text on a certain page and so it's very easy to create a back-end interface for them to access, hook it up to a database and then display it on the site. But when you're talking about 20 or 30+ pages, it can be a drag.
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@spufiFeb 27.2012 — I'm guessing drupal since it's built to be a cms as where WP is a blogging tool so you have to tweak it to make it be like a cms.
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@hastxFeb 28.2012 — I have been completely anti framework / CMS for a very long time...knowing that I could find so many classes, functions, etc to build an extensive library to give any client what they were looking for...I just did not have the time to learn a CMS and besides, it seemed regardless what i used I still had to implement custom stuff at some point. And by the time you added plugins you wanted, they seemed slow.

My mind has changed now that I found MODX. It is a fast CMS that is really built with programmers in mind...It isnt intended to replace the need to know basic html, etc, but rather just help you develop with it much faster. Instead of me trying to figure out which plugin I want to use for a photo indexer...I just grab some php code and throw it in.

Check it out http://www.modx.com/
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@Alan_PFeb 28.2012 — I wrote my own CMS. I has an admin area where the owner can easily add, edit, delete their information. It's small and fast. It's great because its just code, so I can easily insert it into any website in just a couple minutes. This way I don't waste time hacking crappy designs that seem to come with most CMS type programs.

It's also great for converting static websites into dynamic websites without having to change the client's existing design.

The user can add as many pages as they want. The new page is hidden by default so they can put their information on it. They can view the page in their admin area to make sure it looks the way they want it to before making it publicly viewable. When they do make it publicly available a link is automatically added to their navigation menu. They can add a picture to their page if they want. The script re-sizes the user's image to a size more palatable for the web and creates a thumbnail image that's placed on the page and linked to the larger image.

Making your own programs will save you time and make you more money. You'll have to invest some time in the initial development of your programs, but after that it'll take just a few minutes to give your clients what they want.

Wordpress is free and free has no value in many people's mind, which makes it hard to stick a decent price tag on it. But its great if just looking to make a little butter and egg money.
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