[lionrock88]

Someone has suggested that we use Wordpress as our backend CMS for our corporate website (we are a SME).

We would have a completely customsied and professionally designed front-end UI.

I thought Wordpress was mainly for blogs? Has anyone used it as an advanced website CMS and is it any good?

[Lammarite]

KIA has been fiddling around with it- worth asking him.
I have only used Joomla.

[lionrock88]

Originally Posted by Lammarite

KIA has been fiddling around with it- worth asking him.
I have only used Joomla.

How's Joomla? Would that be good for our purposes?

[Lammarite]

Originally Posted by lionrock88

How's Joomla? Would that be good for our purposes?

I have used it for SME's before and it has been fine. I don't know enough about Wordpress to objectively say which is better for your needs.

[jonnye]

Originally Posted by Lammarite

I have used it for SME's before and it has been fine. I don't know enough about Wordpress to objectively say which is better for your needs.

I know that wordpress has been adding CMS features with their more recent releases. However, the OP is probably better off with either Joomla, as per Lammarite's suggestion, or Drupal.

[lionrock88]

Originally Posted by jonnye

I know that wordpress has been adding CMS features with their more recent releases. However, the OP is probably better off with either Joomla, as per Lammarite's suggestion, or Drupal.

How is Joomla or Drupal in terms of user-friendliness for a non-techie? I'm not technical and these ones seem quite hardcore..

[jonnye]

Originally Posted by lionrock88

How is Joomla or Drupal in terms of user-friendliness for a non-techie? I'm not technical and these ones seem quite hardcore..

Hmm - not too sure to be honest. It depends just how non-techie you are. Both will involve installing a database (MySQL is the usual suspect) and PHP on the server. This really needn't be too difficult though. It's just installing an application after all.

From memory, drupal is a straightforward archive extraction and then running through a wizard via a web-page to configure it. This configuration could seem a bit bewildering to a non-techie as it will ask questions about the database and file locations etc...

And once, installed, I guess customising it to suit your desired look and feel might be more involved (although both Joomla and Drupal have freely downloadable 'skins' available).

You've never really said how scalable the thing needs to be overall, which makes it difficult to judge what is the right thing for you. There's nothing (except cost of time I guess) to stop you downloading these things and having a play with them and see what is easiest/fits your needs the best.

[KnowItAll]

DO NOT use wordpress if you're not in a position to patch your server every two weeks. They manage to release more buggy software than Microsoft at times.

Here's a list of problems you'd have to deal with.

CVE - Search Results

[zenlogo]

Sorry, can't comment on Wordpress but would like to give my 2 cents about Drupal. I had a 'run in' with Drupal when a techie told me it was 'easy for non-techies'. Drupal uses 'modules' that the webmaster loads into the basic drupal site template. The basic site is so primitive it doesn't even have a navigation capability. Even the need to show images requires a separate module (have you ever heard of a site that doesn't use navigation or images?). This would all be fine except when you load a module, there are frequent bugs and the only way to fix the bugs is to be conversant of a programming language called PHP. Drupal help forums are full of technical gibberish of novice programmers asking other programmers how to achieve a simple task or fix a bug. Many experienced programmers like drupal because of the modular aspects, they can throw a site together quick and not have to write a lot of repetitive code from scratch everytime. Many designers (who are not also programmers) hate it because of its bugs, complexity, design inflexibility and the need to learn programming to really run it. The learning curve is more like a whirlpool that sucks you in forever.

If you want a non-techie interface you might consider WYSIWYG site-builders that some hosts supply. The problem with most is the design inflexibility (many have only 2 column). I use DomainDirect.com as their site builder is intuitive and offers excellent design flexibility.

[Lammarite]

I haven't really experienced any of these issues with Joomla.
I have a friend who loads everything up onto the server so I just get the showroom site and I pull it apart and redesign it from there. Adding images etc is easy as can be, as are forums, newsletters, galleries, videos etc.