I did a site for a Church a couple of years ago, but they do their own updates and keep messing up the layout and code. I’m thinking they need a better solution so when they are editing some html pages, they don’t mess up things in the process.
I’m leaning towards designing a WordPress site for them and giving them a little training on how to publish and edit their content with it. Also, think there’s a lot of good plugins out there that would be useful to them related to podcasting their sermons, events calendars, photo galleries, etc.
However, now I’m looking at Squarespace and think maybe this could be a good solution for them, but don’t know too much about Squarespace. Can a Squarespace site basically accomplish everything a WordPress site can? What are the pros and cons of Squarespace?
As the Church members aren’t too computer savvy and on a limited budget, basically looking for a solution for them that would be easiest for them to post their own content and would not require a great deal of time for me to train them on.
Wordpress is best suited to blogging, rather than a site with lots of pages and content to be updated.
Squarespace is more what you need, as it gives the customer access to lots of areas for updating. That said, there are many alternatives. Companies like Squarespace charge a lot per month, as the site is hosted with them. There are other content management systems (cms) out there that are hosted on your own web space that don’t have ongoing fees, and these are much better in my view.
There are free ones, like Drupal, MODx, Silverstripe and CMS Made Simple, but also ones you pay for, such as ExpressionEngine. In my view, the best one out there is ExpressionEngine, so I recommend you look into it. It’s easy to teach clients how to post content and manage their site, and it has a very slick and pretty interface (especially the recently released–though still Beta–version 2).
Thanks for the your great response. Will be checking out some of those other cms sites you’ve provided.
It may come down to plug-ins though. There’s many great WP plug-ins out there that I think the client would be interested in based on what they want their site to do. If I wish to use some of these plug-ins, I assume I would need to use WordPress would I not? Or at least would be more difficult to implement these plugin functionalities into other cms applications.
All of the major CMSs have a myriad of plugins, so that’s not necessarily an issue. WP is noted for its plugins, of course, so it’s a great option if a blog-like site is what you are looking for.
ExpressionEngine has a myriad of amazing plugins—although many of them have not currently been updated for version 2, though that will change soon. Others like Drupal also have a huge number of plugins, so it’s not just WP that does this.
From my experiences, I’ve seen a lot of great websites running on Wordpress. At first glance, it may seem odd, but Wordpress isn’t a bad option for a CMS.
Personally, going with either will give you the site you’re looking for. I will say that SquareSpace has a lot of customization and can deliver a very clean looking website.
If you are keen on coding a site yourself, an option like Squarespace will be dissatisfying, as you will not be in control of all of the code. The CMS will insert a lot of unnecessary stuff. If you view source on such sites, it’s not a pretty sight. So I’d say only go with an option like that if code is not your thing. There are better hosted options if you want to control your code, such as Webvanta. I’ve made a list of various kinds of CMS [URL=“http://www.pageaffairs.com/web/cms/choosing-a-cms/”]here, if you are interested.