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Ask Slashdot: What's The Best CMS?

Posted by EditorDavid on from the intermittent-updates dept.

Slashdot reader pipingguy recently inherited a 2012 installation of Joomla 1.5.26, and while performing four years worth of updates, began wondering about other content management systems. I've built more than a few static websites (I use Sublime Text 3 or Atom, not some fancy-pants WYSIWYG doohickey) and am quite familiar with CSS, but databases not so much. I've been through lots of online documentation and am a bit bewildered, but I'm following the recommendations regarding backups and the like.

What are Slashdot readers' latest opinions on the three most popular CMSes -- Drupal, Joomla and WordPress? Any tips for me before I accidentally blow away the existing site and have to rebuild everything...?
Leave your educated opinions in the comments...

4 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Why only the top 3? What about other top 10 cms? by Cryophallion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why do we have to stick with only the top 3? Aren't there great options who some haven't heard of yet?

    Personally, I adore concrete5 (www.concrete5.org). They are making some major changes to the structure, and the upcoming version 8 adds new data objects that will make it more than just the page centric pattern it was before. The developers are active and engaging with the community, it's been around for long enough to be mature, and the in context editing is a huge asset to the end user.

    When I look at a CMS, I don't just look at how to code within it, although that is massively important. I also look at how easy it is for end users to pick up and customize. And being able to make changes to an area right in that area on that page is a killer feature. The fact that the block architecture ensures you can add special custom areas very easily and in a modular fashion is also extremely helpful.

    I've worked with all the big CMSs, and tested them out. I've tested out a boatload of the medium sized ones as well. C5 was hands down the winner.

  3. Re: Notepad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Real programmers use butterflies.

    http://xkcd.com/378/

  4. Depending on scenrio, none by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You may instead consider a static site generator (there are a ton, jekyll, hugo, a google search for static site generator will turn up a bunch)

    Then your server load is much lighter by getting out of server side anything by people just reading), you can still provide search most of the time (lunr). By avoiding a CMS, you are less likely to have a gaping security hole (e.g. my team has an internal only git server to coordinate maintaining it and building it, then uploading it to a dumb static server).

    So step one is considering whether you really *need* a CMS, a lot of folks really don't.