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What CMS Platform Should I Be Using to Create My Website

Wordpress, Squarespace, Drupal, Shopify, Joomla?

By Chloe WaltonPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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There are many CMS systems to choose from when you want to create your website, so it is sometimes hard to decide which one will be the best to select for the website you would like to create. Here we discuss the benefits and disadvantages of some of the most popular CMS systems to help you make an informed decision.

Wordpress

We believe the number one website builder is WordPress based on its popularity, powerful features, ease of use, and scalability. WordPress is used by some of the most widely recognised brands in the world such as CNN, Disney, Mercedes-Benz, and Facebook, as well as the Great Britain government sites, which can only show us that it trusted by many reliable sources. Not only is WordPress easy to use, create and edit your website, it also has some great features that are making it the go to website for many companies and organisations. WordPress is an SEO powerhouse coded to be SEO-friendly and has a range of plugins that can help improve your SEO greatly. WordPress is very responsive and this can mean wonders for your website's SEO as Google’s latest ranking method is to give sites that perform well on all devices, including mobile devices, a higher ranking. Having a responsive site means you can reach more people on more devices, thus adding reach and credibility to your brand. WordPress is designed with security in mind and has frequent security updates released to keep your website safe, helping protect your information.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a SaaS website builder where you pay a monthly fee to use it, but everything you need to build and maintain your website is provided in that, including templates, hosting, e-commerce, a content management system, support, and a domain. Squarespace makes it easy for people without web development skills possible to create a website. Squarespace is not an open source website builder like WordPress, so developers are unable to create their own add-ons and widgets, which is a negative feature for a lot of people. However, WordPress finds it hard to police the addons that are being created which can lead to some low-quality plugins. With Squarespace, as they are not an open source website builder, only their own in-house development team can produce tools for users, meaning you know that all the tools available are high quality and tested to ensure it works perfectly every time.

Shopify

Shopify is the number one e-commerce CMS platform and is great for online shops. You don’t need any previous web development knowledge or experience to start up a website with them, as they offer a lot of different pre-made designs and layouts to choose from. Shopify, however, is not free like other CMS platforms Wordpress, Joomla and Drupel, but it does have a package that makes it extremely easy to edit your website and manage products and inventories. In that price, you get a custom domain name, 24/7 help, credit cards payments easily accepted and the option to automate your fulfilment process with a third party shipping app.

Joomla

Some say Joomla is the perfect balance between customisation and user friendliness and is more complex than WordPress. However, when using Joomla, you will need some basic knowledge of HTML/CSS as it is more technical that CMS platforms like WordPress, but not as technical as Drupal. Joomla is great for creating online stores and makes the process quick and painless. They also make creating social networks really easy. Joomla offers a help portal to ask questions and receive technical support; however it is not as extensive as the WordPress community forum, but it is quicker and cheaper than Drupal’s technical support options. Some examples of huge companies that use Joomla to create and maintain their websites are Ebay, Holiday Inn, and IKEA.

Drupal

Drupal is more technically advanced than other CMS sites, which makes it very good for technical people, but not so great for beginners. Drupal is easy to customise with many widely available plug ins, themes, and other configurable options to choose from. You are able to edit the root files directly, so it is perfect for developers that want to make significant changes to websites and do more advanced processes. A big advantage of using Drupal is that the pages on websites made on this CMS tend to load quicker and have faster response times than any other CMS. Some notable companies who have used Drupal to create and maintain their website are Gatwick airport, the Economist, and Phizer pharmaceuticals.

To help clearly show the differences and compare each CMS, we have mentioned, we have created an infographic to help you out further! See below:

So, which one should you be using? This really depends on your skill level, how much you want to spend, and what type of company you are. Having said, this all of the CMS platforms we have mentioned are great options and will help create a brilliant website for your company, so you will be in safe hands no matter which one you decide.

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