Choosing a CMS to Build Your Website

Normally, CMSs have their own structure, such as blogs (blogging software), forums (forum software) and general content management systems, such as Drupal

Before we go into picking the system, you need to define what you need before doing anything.

• Is it for your business?


• For your hobby?


• Do you want to sell any digital or tangible stuff?

  Also, you’ll need to know what all you and your visitors want to do on the website.

  • Do you want to just publish articles?
  
  
  • Do you want to have a blog?
  
  
  • Do you want a forum?
  
  
  • Any classifieds section?
  
  
  • An online shop, maybe?
    • Do you want to build and inform a mailing list?
    • Do you want others to do anything on your site?

      Obviously, each of the choices will place several requirements for a CMS, create a list of what all you and your want to do on your website. Use your imagination. How would you and your people really like to communicate and share things on a website.

      Once you have identified what you want to do, you’ll need to translate the wishes to specific system features, such as basic content publishing, a blog, a forum or a shop module with additional plug-ins (many systems allow anyone contribute a plugin or a module to enhance the platform).

      After you have a list of features/wishes in front of you, you can start shopping.

      Know where to look

      The most obvious stop to look for a cmsmatrix.org

      Here you can select what you want your CMS by clicking on its name. Bear in mind that the data may be outdated (a quick scan revealed that classified ads module available on the main Drupal website).

      The next step would be CMS you want (albeit through a not very usable menu) and login as an administrator. As you’ll still have to manage the CMS is about and how easy/hard it is to work with.

      And another way to learn about various content management systems is around on your favorite forums and search in your favorite search engine for ‘how to choose a CMS comparison posts, such as these:

      • CMS
      
      
      • How to choose a 2006 Drupal vs Joomla (Drupal forums discussion)
      
      
      • Push Vs. Pull - The Battle for the Best They hate Drupal, they love Drupal
      
      
      • CMS you need (or may have already found the one), I’ll tell you why I like a great handbook, a forum and lots of contributed modules (may as well apply to a couple of other platforms, though)
      
      
      • Drupal is very performance-oriented: make sure the system will work for you and that you’ll learn to work with it. Otherwise, you’ll be in trouble.
        So, I found it, what next?

        After you find a platform to setup or test, you’ll need to read the installation instructions for the system, usually found on a highly visible place on the website and with the installation files. Typically, you’ll need to:

        • download the copy from the FTP program
        
        
        • create a MySQL database, along with a user (with a name and password) to use the database
        
        
        • specify the database path, name and the user login and password
        
        
        • set the WAMP) and see how it goes. If anything, try another Comments