December 1, 2008 - 9:05am
Choosing A Platform
What you seem to be asking is, "How Do I Choose A Platform For My Site?" There is no easy answer to this and it depends. I've used frameworks, written how grown setups, and used drupal. What you really need to look for is what will give you the best and most cost effective solution.
Earlier this year I wrote a post on picking a CMS. You can read it at http://www.innovatingtomorrow.net/2008/01/04/how-c....
A different decision is whether to choose a CMS, framework (think Roby on Rails), or a home grown solution. If you don't have a need or a bit of money to spend I won't suggest staying away from a home grown solution. If they are written well they typically perform the best. But, you have to manage lots of bug squashing, they cost more to write, and a lot of other headaches.
Now, as a coder I prefer to work with frameworks. I like to push the limits and have as much control as I can have while doing things my own way. As a consumer I prefer a CMS. They have a lot of usability testing, others working on the content moderation, management, and handling. There are communities you can get into of people doing similar things as a webmaster to help and more.
These are just a few things to think about. This might be a good topic for an upcoming episode. We talked about it like 2 years ago and I'm sure I would revise what I have to say now.
I am in the process of building a Christian website called www.oneway.com. The site will have: forums, videos, articles, Bible tools, prayer requests, evangelism tools, e-tracts, downloadable audio and print Bibles, e-learning environment, missionary blogs, etc BUT the trick is that I will have landing pages for each major language in the wold which will have all these tools in each language.
I am trying to make a decision on which CMS to use...drupal or joomla. OR if I should just have it built from scratch. I had my business site built from scratch www.constructionwork.com but it was a lot of work and these platforms seem like they would speed up the process substantially.
It seems to be a pretty popular question and a rather heated debate from what I have read on this and other sites. I am not a tech guy! So most of what I have read has been over my head. Could someone please help me understand the pros and cons in the decision?
I really appreciate what you guys are doing here! i also believe the internet is a great way to reach the hardest to reach parts of the world with the Gospel.
Thanks for your service.