Custom CMS vs. Wordpress

I have seen the number of websites that I mange grow from just one to 5 in the past few years, and I expect that number to continue to grow. I am a web developer proficient enough in PHP/MySQL and front end AJAX- and until now I have been using Wordpress as my content management system with custom Plugins and themes, and it seems to be working ok.

I have reached a point, however, where I’m forced to evaluate Wordpress as my default solution, especially when I have the prospect of more and more web projects. The basic problem is this: the content defined by Wordpress is the “Post” and to a lesser extent “Page” or “Media”, which includes meta data like tag and category. Unfortunately, “Posts” are not the only kind of content on the web. (Even Sitepoint has blogs, articles, videos, reference, forums, etc. that go far past the idea of a “post”)

I have heard people talk about deploying Wordpress for eCommerce, or even adapting to other forms of content. But my instinct tells me that a CMS should manage specifically the type of content that is required.

Specifically take a look at the example of a web comic. The content of the site is an image in JPEG format. The metadata includes all the normal meta (title, date, author, etc. etc.), but there is more to it. Comics are serial, so its position in a chain of comics (not necessarily chronological) is important, so are the number of frames, and even things like format type: color or black and white. This content certainly extends beyond the idea of a “post”.

To do the web comic in Wordpress- I would add the comic as an enclosure to the post, and use custom fields to define the meta data described above, then structure the theme around the enclosure. Of course this is possible.

My question to the community is this:

1. Given what I have discussed above, would a custom CMS base for my own personal web development that can extend the idea of “content” to any form of content be more beneficial in the long run of web development than relying on Wordpress?

2. What are your thoughts on Custom vs Pre-packaged solutions?

3. Have any of you faced a similar turning point in your development careers, and if so, would you be willing to share the choices you made?

I would love to hear from you guys!

SitePoint does not use a single application, the forums are vBulletin, the blog is Wordpress. The two apps are “bridged” with vBulletin handling user authentication and logins.

Hello
it is a very helpful to me.

Thank you so much

Wordpress is my personal choice. Developing something custom is time consuming.

Sometimes you just outgrow what Wordpress (or any other system) can reasonably offer, every system for managing content has it’s limitations.

By the sound of it you may need to start looking at Content Management Systems, rather than a Blog system.

Well, developing your own CMS will allow to you make it work however you wanted, not how someone else tells you. Mind you, you might be reinventing the wheel because there are many existing CMS’s that allow you to build things your way, eg ModX, Expressionenine…

It really depends who is going to use the CMS. If it’s a customer then custom is often an expensive route and not all customers have enormous bugets.

Similarly if there’s a problem you can’t fix who do you go to for help? Many off the shelf systems come with developer support either as part of the package or as an addon.

Yes. When I started 10+ years ago I’d never have dreamt I’d be doing the sort of things I do now. As you progress in your career you often find yourself going down a certain path and you end up specialising in certain key areas.

This is very helpful, thanks! You’re right, Content Management rather than blog engines is definitely what we are going for. You started with a list ModX, Expressionnine … could you expand that list and give an opinion as to which is best?

not sure if it’s a concern, but if you have clients updating their sites then wordpress poses the problem that they have access to potentially too much customizability and could break things without realizing it. If you’re doing all the managing personally that may not be a concern at all, but something to think about.
I think it really depends on how well you understand wordpress and how intuitive you find it. If you’re really good with php I can see it being better in the long run to do your own from scratch. It’s very difficult for someone else to know that, though

I’d agree with those above - there’s no point in reinventing the wheel. I can see the point in developing a custom CMS but for it to be worth it the content it would be handling would need to be pretty specialised.

I’d recommend checking out something like Drupal or even a symfony plugin called Sympal which allows you to manage multiple sites from the same installation and it’s also highly configurable.

Hi bbengfort,

There are a few other tools out there that will help you build your own CMS-based websites that include pre built modules for Blogs, forums, news, etc. out there.

There is one that I am familiar with called OpenSites Web Development Platform from Voloper Creations that allows you to build such websites at an affordable cost and gives you complete control.

Cheers,
Drew