Merge

So the time has come to create or revamp your company's website, and you know that your plans are ambitious. There may be hundreds of pages of content, an events calendar, photo slideshows, and a blog--not to mention integration with Google Maps for directions, Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates, Vimeo for videos, and perhaps even e-commerce. When you start thinking about your next website, things can quickly start to seem overwhelming. And how easy will it be for you to keep that site up to date?

These concerns are quite common--so common in fact that today these problems have largely been solved by open source content management systems (CMS). Here at Merge, we have used such tools to help clients get the most out of their web presence, and one of our favorites is Drupal. The result of countless hours of development and improvement by thousands of contributors (including a few from Team Merge), Drupal and its vast collection of modules and themes greatly simplifies and quickens the task of creating complex websites.

When considering the difference between an established open source CMS and a proprietary one, the issue eventually becomes a choice between Proof and Promises. Whereas Drupal, and other popular platforms such as Wordpress or eZ Publish, have proven track records powering thousands of sites across the web, a proprietary system must be trusted on the basis of far fewer sites and its claims about what it can deliver. And with so many proprietary systems to choose from, there is no clear leader in this very crowded market.

With over a decade's experience programming for the web, I myself have used a mix of open source and proprietary CMS through the years while working for various employers, and the differences between the two are quite stark. While a proprietary CMS seems to offer the promise of better customization, the fact is that such customization can take a very long time to develop, test, and implement, simply because the manpower is limited to that company's employees. Another potential problem is what happens with your site if the developer of your CMS leaves that company. We at Merge have had our fair share of clients who lamented going down the "custom CMS" route in the past, mainly because of stalled development due to these two main issues.

On the other hand, an established open source CMS has benefited from the contributions of such a vast number of developers, it answers most every challenge you could conceive. Drupal in particular has addressed a very wide range of feature requests from our clients, which allows us to implement changes quickly and save time and money for ourselves and our clients. It also allows us to spend more time on customizations that we do actually need to make ourselves, yet still create them on a platform that is familiar to more developers. Additionally, such basic issues as site security and site speed can be optimized promptly through the use of regularly updated components.

Bottom Line: As a client, your content should always be your own, and it should be easily maintainable. Using a widely adopted CMS ensures that you won't become limited by your website's technology as the years go by, and that future improvements can be made much more quickly and reliably.