Custom CMS vs. Wordpress

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1

I have seen the number of websites that I manage 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!

2

I love wordpress and have great respect to all the contributors of the framework (except the flash uploader w/c will break things sooner or later) However almost all of my clients finds wordpress too complicated for them so most often, I ended up creating a custom built CMS for them.

So the main focus is user experience and client preferences.

In a custom built solution , you’ll have to worry of many things like security, performance, optimization, standards etc etc while on a pre-packed solution all you have to worry are Mods and in the case of wordpress you don’t have to worry much as there are tons of plugins ready for the taking.

But then again the main focus is user experience and client preferences

3

If you are a developer, I would suggest going with a pre-packaged solution such as WordPress or Drupal. Most importantly, this will end up saving time because you should be able to find a mod that does what you want it to do, or you could create your own plugin.

A custom solution would give you the most flexibility, but it will take the most time and/or resources.

4

If you want simple website use wordpress, but if you want something way more coplex use drupal. I am building websites with drupal and I don’t have any imposible things. You can do what ever you want. no limits. Create own cms is too much time consuming process and it don’t needed