[ale] Web page solution for a user (not a sysadmin, etc.)

[Robert Reese]

Hello Greg,

Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 10:40:41 AM, you wrote:

> All,

> My wife wants to launch a small business and needs to design a web page for it.

> I can host it on virtual linux server I control (ftp / apache already
> in place), but it has been 5+ yrs since I created a marketing web
> page.

> What is a good solution for doing this?  I don't want her to have to
> invest man-weeks coming up to speed.  So quick and dirty is the
> secret. 

Wordpress is super simple and similarly featureless.  It is a blog, so a lack of business management is to be expected.  It does offer a wide range of templates, which are also easily customized.


Drupal is a blog-turned-CMS, and it does okay in terms of being a CMS.  The sacrifice is that is more difficult to learn than Wordpress.  However, its CMS abilities are desirable.  There are a fair number of Drupal templates out there, and they are also customizable.

http://www.drupal.org/
[ http://www.drupal.org/ ]


Joomla! is a superior CMS, much more powerful and, in some parts, easier than Drupal.  Overall, however, it is more difficult than Drupal to master, but not much.  Like Wordpress, Joomla! has an amazing selection of templates to choose from, many are free and all are customizable.
http://www.joomla.org/ 
[ http://www.joomla.org/ ]


My favorite source of Joomla! templates, and as of two weeks ago Wordpress, is RocketTheme; my jaw has dropped at more RocketTheme templates than all other template/theme sites for all CMS and blogs combined.  (It *is* a club, but you get perpetual rights to the theme(s)/templates you were using at the end of your membership.)

http://rockettheme.com/
[ http://rockettheme.com/ ]



To reiterate, Joomla! is a little more difficult than Drupal to master, but its capabilities and add-on module choices make Joomla! a much better choice than Drupal.  That is, the trade-off for a little bit easier learning is a substantial loss of future (and current) features.  At the easiest, and least business-oriented, is WordPress.  (The Firefox add-on ScribeFire works great with WordPress and also reportedly works with Drupal with a little fiddling.)

By the way, even if your wife starts with WordPress it can be 'wrapped around' by Drupal or Joomla! later.  After all, Wordpress is a blog and simply would become the blog component of a CMS.


Lastly, there is one more CMS, a new-comer, that I've heard good things about but haven't actually tried: MODx CMS.  It is supposed to be easy to implement, easy to learn, and have good CMS features.  In fact, on its front page, MODx claims: "Make sites your clients can actually run with just an hour of training, and without breaking the site."

http://www.modxcms.com/
[ http://www.modxcms.com/ ]

I found an interesting series on MODx here:
http://www.imajestic.com/blog/2009/08/the-new-kid-in-town-modx-arrives-on-the-cms-scene-offers-intuitive-alternative-to-joomla-wordpress-drupal/
[ http://www.imajestic.com/blog/2009/08/the-new-kid-in-town-modx-arrives-on-the-cms-scene-offers-intuitive-alternative-to-joomla-wordpress-drupal ]

The downsides of MODx are a lack of templates, a lack of large community support, and a small developer base.


One more thing to consider: all the top three, WP and Drupal and Joomla!, should be "one-click" type installs on virtually any hosting service. Obviously a lot more goes into it than a single click, but you can have Wordpress up, running, and completely customized and  ready to go in a half-hour.  Drupal can be up and running and customized in as little as a few hours, as can Joomla!.  If you use a Joomla! "Kickstart" template from RocketTheme, that can be cut down very quickly; and while it isn't as braindead  easy as a one-click style download, it DOES comes pretty close!  Think 1-click = Kindergarten and RocketTheme Kickstart = 3rd Grade.  It takes maybe five to ten more minutes to do the Kickstart, but hours are saved on customization AND the site is already stunning and ready for final customization and convergence from demo data to actual data.

Best wishes to your wife in her endeavors.  Post links so we can help her search engine ratings.

Cheers,
Robert~

P.S., whatever it takes, keep her away from FrontPage!!