Now my question is if its better to learn HOW to build a custom CMS so you will also understand how to modify templates etc on prebuild CMSs ?
Im really stuck with this and hope someone can tell me whats the best to learn first because I want to know both.

Thanks in advance,
Louis

Are custom systems better? Yes they are, if done right. But does the client have the money and time for a custom job? Not always.

A lot of it comes down to communication. The client may want a site that does ABC in a certain way. Thats fine, and you can make a site that does exactly what they want. But if you explain to the client that you can do ABC in a slightly different way for a fraction of the cost by using a system like Drupal, then they will appreciate your honesty. And that could win you the job over a more expensive developer.

I do have to admit, I’m surprised no one has even mentioned Joomla! Very easy to use, easy to customize, easy to omit.

1. Small and medium sized businesses want solutions which are very flexible and they want it NOW! So I give them what they want with a system which can expand as they expand.
2. I don’t like locking my clients in. I tell them this, and I think they appreciate it. There are LOTS of developers who have worked with Joomla and if a client hates me at least their web site can continue to be developed by someone else.
3. I don’t load, stress or even put that much effort into compatibility testing (other than templates) as I know and benefit from over 100,000 web sites already using the system. This is very important, see point 1 as to why.
4. If I need an e-commerce system or a forum or a wiki, etc. I can quote a sensible amount of my time to implementing the appropriate plug-in for Joomla. Most of the time there is already one available which meets or surpasses my clients requirements. I usually offer clients systems which they can grow in to rather than be dependent on me.

I used to build custom solutions but I stopped because the cost was too high, the quality too low, and ultimately I can offer my clients better quality and value for money by using a CMS which has the base functionality covered.

On a final note, coding an authentication system was fun the first time and irritating the second time, and terrible the third. I am not a robot, I like job diversity, therefore I will leverage other people’s excellent systems and spend my expertise doing the tricky things my clients can’t rather than charging them for the boring things I hate.

Am I right or wrong?

Content authors need extremely simple, non-technical interfaces for maintaining content, publishing new pages, etc. They want point-and-click interfaces for everything, and should not need to know any HTML for typical content work.

Site developers need to be able to work efficiently with the CMS, setting up overall information architecture, page layouts, page designs, etc. They need the CMS to make life easier, and get out of the way.

These may be conflicting goals. Certainly in the marketplace there are plenty of good developer-focused CMS products that have poor end-user interfaces; there are just as many easy-to-use CMSs that make life a misery for site developers.

At the end of the day, though, there’s a lot that goes into developing a viable CMS product. I estimated a few weeks ago that it costs $5mil to develop a commercial CMS (or the equivalent time donated to an open source effort).

As Rex indicated, that’s work relating to versioning, permissions, modules, etc. And does the world really need yet another half-baked CMS? :-)

So I would always tend to lean towards an out-of-the-box solution. Is Drupal a great CMS? Not really. How well do many of the open source CMS products stack up? Pretty averagely. What about the commercial CMS products? They’re OK, but not guaranteed to be great.

I definitely think there is a market opportunity for a CMS (open source or otherwise) that is simple, and just “works” for straightforward sites like the ones in this competition. CMSs that don’t need to be wrestled or fought with just to get a simple site up.

Anyway, just my $0.02,
James

Prebuilt CMS like drupal has alot of benefits over building one from scratch in 24hrs. Some of the advantages I can think of are:

- revisions – ability to save different versions
- permission system – drupal can create user types easily and customise the permission level for each modules. We had 3 levels of volunteer, content_writer and super administrator. And all the menus can be customised, so its actually simple and easy to use as most users will only see the limited number of links.
- modules repository – we can easily add ready made modules for different kind of requirements. e.g. volunteers will see a calendar of events where they can opt in.
- because drupal is quite popular, it is easily for the client to find support and developers if we cannot provide support in the future.
- drupal is a mature software, it is less likely to have bugs and security issues. I don’t think it would be possible to build a robust solution in 24hrs.

Custom coded sites are always alpha releases. The haven’t been load tested and run through the ringer to display all the weird and annoying ways that the code goes screwy.

Not really, at least if you have proper testing procedures and resources in place. Nothing we do custom hits the street without some vicious load testing.

A corollary to that is the fact that active projects have a lot of people watching out for various exploits and patching them quickly. I’d much rather follow a Drupal forum and find out that I need an upgrade than find out with a cracked database or defaced pages. Build enough sites and you too will know the joy of malicious hackers.

Cracking custom apps is probably harder than cracking the large, popular open source apps for a few reasons. One is that, unless you (or your client) happens to be a target, there is very little payoff with cracking a one-off custom application. Whereas finding a zero-day exploit for WordPress or Joomla will let you deface thousands of sites and/or compromise thousands of servers.

Regardless, each situation has different demands…