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What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:07 am
by jeeremie
Title: What cms should I use? Hi,

My new client wants a site very similar to this one: http://www.trato.fr/fr/products/. Gallery image of the products + details for each.

I thought to use a e-commerce system (such as magento or zen cart) but actually the client doesn't need a shopping cart. He just wants to be able to add new categories, products and description of the product.

Besides, visitors should be able to download the technical documentation of a product. You can see an example at http://www.trato.fr/fr/products/products.php?h=2&p=97#. It is called "Fiche Technique" in french (the PDF document at the bottom).

Do you know any CMS that would do that or should I code the site myself (in that case I will use a PHP framework).

Thanks.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 5:35 am
by matthewl
I think when a client is paying for the work, it is best to discuss the requirements with them.

We developed our own in house cms that modular based so we can put together a site that does exactly what the client needs in a short amount of time.

If you are desprate to use a CMS, then you might want to take a look on hotscripts and see which best suits your clients needs, but you will probably find that long term it will be worth your time developing something your self.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 5:56 am
by jeeremie
Thanks. I think I will create my own in house CMS as you say. You are the second person to recommend doing that. Thanks for the advice.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 6:51 am
by matthijs
You realize that building a CMS is quite a lot of work? certainly when you want to use it for clients, it has to be user-friendly, have enough features, be very secure, etc.

There are many CMS systems out there (maybe too many), some of them are actually quite good I think. If the site isn't too big you can even use something like Wordpress. Otherwise there are open source systems like Drupal, Joomla, Typo3 and a commercial system like Expression Engine

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 6:54 am
by matthewl
although it is hardwork, longterm it can save you time.

One major disadvantage with an off the shelf solution is that if a security vunerbility is found in that product your instantly vuneriable. We all know that people spend hours searching for versions of phpbb that have not been upgraded, just beacuse there are open hacks everywhere for the older versions.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:13 am
by matthijs
Well, but if there's a security problem in your home made system you're instantly vulnerable as well. The difference is that it's not brought to your attention as quick as with a well known system. And secondly, to fix the issue you're on your own to solve it.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 1:01 pm
by matthewl
Its a valid point, but if the "scum" of the internet are going to target a site, will they go for a system that they already know the vunerbilities of or will they target a system they know nothing about?

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:03 am
by chetan1
You can use joomla,Drupal etc.These CMS mostly used to make web sites.U can add more functionality according to yourself.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 7:32 pm
by rimian
It's a common misconception that Open Source software is less secure because the code is available to anyone. Anyone who tells you this hasn't really had a lot of experience using Open Source. Sure, there are examples like phpBB but there are also many unsecure proprietary sources (Windows XP) and very secure Open Source projects like Free BSD.

There's just no correlation. One one hand you're talking about security through obscurity and the other is security by design. I know which policy I would rather use.

Building your own CMS is very hard work. It will benefit you but it's not guaranteed that it will pay off in the long term. I am building one at the moment as an exercise and it's tough.

Joomla and Drupal are frequent answers to this kind of question. I have used both extensively and found that while Drupal has a steeper learning curve, it is well worth the effort spent learning it. Joomla doesn't have as good support and its e-commerce component (virtuemart) is just poor quality.

Take a look at Kohana. It might be a good place to start if you want to develop yourself.

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 7:55 pm
by jeeremie
Thanks Rimiam

I will have a look at Kohana.

Finally, I didn't accept the job. The guy only wanted to spend 300-500€. There was something like 100 pages to fill. Crazy!

Re: What cms should I use for a commercial site?

Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 11:08 pm
by Christopher
I too would recommend Joomla and Drupal. Joomla is an easier all-in-one solution. Drupal is better if you want to customize the code.