Most usable CMS for clients and why?

CMS & WordPress
1

I suppose being my first post, I should just say hi!

I was just wondering in the web-development community, when you create websites for clients - what CMS do you find is most usable for clients? Also, what CMS do you think offers the best flexibility and features from your point of view?

Would love to hear your thoughts, thank you.

2

I think Joomla is a great CMS. they are easy to build more module for your demand. well structured script.
I have built one here sim so dep by using Joomla

3

Fair enough. And your clients found it easy to use?

Anyone else?

4

Have not used Joomla, I use wordpress for my personal sites, and Drupal for customer sites. If you have a developer, Drupal is pretty powerful though has a higher learning curve.

what capabilities do you need in the CMS? Do you need things like workflow? Who will be updating the site (even end users, or just some admins?

5

I’ve found WordPress to be pretty simple for most clients - in particular for simple CMSs with no need for posts - just “pages”.

I’d love to really get into Drupal but the user interface (from the clients’ point of view) has always seen quite complex for them to get their heads around.

6

Yes, I agree wordpress is pretty easy to manage.

However, if you give your users an administration manual for their website, they always appreciate the power of joomla.

You can generate user manuals for your clients using this service : http://joomanuals.com/ .

I don’t think such a service exists for wordpress

7

Not far as I’ve seen… I write 'em myself!

8

WP for blogs as well as small sites and Joomla for large sites

9

So, some good points about how they’re difficult for clients to use.

In terms of customising code - is there a favourite?

10

joomla sucks use wordpress it is the best and the easiest

11

I use Joomla 1.5 for my website with civicrm module for customer relationship management and everything works perfectly , and it looks very professional.

12

WordPress works perfectly. Easy to customize and clients find it easy to use

13

I would agree with the Wordpress recommendations, while there are other great CMS solutions, many people are used to seeing Wordpress sites and therefore it’s more likely people will understand the interface (purely on the basis that so many others have managed it), in essence it’s a “mass acceptance” vote which swings it. :slight_smile:

14

I’m seeing a lot of recommendations for Joomla here. I’m a bit surprised. I had hoped Drupal would surpass Joomla’s popularity but I guess not. Is Joomla just that easier to use or friendlier than Drupal? I’ve stopped focusing on Drupal lately and just do Wordpress now – as a solo developer it’s easier for me to take on projects that only require the scope of WP.

Back to the original post: It depends on the client. I’ve come across projects that strive for large social networks with user blogs integrated or complicated hierarchical structures and organization. You won’t achieve that in WP.

From my knowledge WP is good for all “find, click, buy” e-commerce; list of services; and portfolios. Considering the ease of its admin interface, it instantly eases the process of educating the client on how to manage the website. The same can’t be said for Drupal (and presumably Joomla?).

15

joomla is very complex for beginners though it has TONS of great features… for beginners drupal aint bad

16

wordpress is powerful and it is easy to use.

17

Can you explain? Are you saying Drupal is more or less difficult for beginners? I haven’t used Joomla yet so I’m curious how they compare.

18

WordPress is easier to learn than most and has a really strong community with great traction.

It was also voted best CMS for 2009.

19

I would advice against using Joomla. I have used Joomla in a few projects and it always comes down to these issues:

  • Using a lot of plug-ins = a lot to update + security issues
  • Default WYSIWYG editor is not very usable (creates bad HTML and hard to use)
  • Creating templates for Joomla requires some PHP knowledge and I always felt it’s bad idea to mix HTML and PHP in the same file
  • Joomla doesn’t support multilingual websites (with some plug-ins it does but see my first point)
  • Security. Joomla had some big security issues in the past so you need to make sure you’re always running the latest version. This issue gets worse if you use a lot of plug-ins as there is no centralized system for checking which plug-ins are out of date.
  • Joomla is hard to modify (try modifying some core functionality to see what I mean).

I would personally use MODx or Drupal depending on your needs.

20

Not on its own but if you combine it with a forum you can