Now that you know about all the moving parts of a fully functioning web- site on the internet, how soon do you think you could put one up? In other words, how soon do you think you can learn to code in multiple languages? Did we mention that it has to be done while coming up with content at the same time?

Thankfully, there are tools for easily constructing your online real estate in a short amount of time (a few hours to a few minutes), known as Content Management Systems. CMSs, for brevity. As the name suggests, a CMS helps you build, maintain and update a site with a focus on the main component – the Content. The CMS handles the rest, with almost all of the functionality configured and deployed behind the scenes. As we will see, CMSs need to evolve constantly with the internet, and therefore necessarily possess modularity, in the form of plugins. Plugins exist for all sorts of extra automation like auto-SEO or auto-responsiveness, or even a whole e-commerce module. You can view the range once you pick your tools. Other than the innards (code creation), another important facet taken care of by the CMS is the outer appearance. The ability to use templates and themes greatly streamlines the amount of time and choices to a great design. It is not possible to give too much general information about CMSs because each is unique in its own way (except the blatant rip-offs of course), but that’s what this chapter is for! Read on so we can help you choose the CMS that will be right for your needs!

Hunt for the Holy CMS

While there are many CMSs, some paid and some free like Wild Apricot, eXo Platform, and Smartimage, there are three very popular completely free options namely, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Of course, they are only free because there are some in-app purchases, but all costs can be avoided with adequate effort and ingenuity. Other advantages include the fact that they are very powerful in terms of functionality. Their popularity ensures that documentation will be user-friendly and the product will continue to be developed to stay relevant. Free help is available for any kind of trouble after a quick search query, and there’s no dearth of paid support. Moreover, the number of themes available will also be proportional to the popularity, a sure-fire customization bonus!

Drupal

The Drupal Project is completely Open Source, so anyone can download and share it. It is the most powerful and developer friendly CMS out there, and also one of the most secure. No wonder it is used by the official websites of the government of Trinidad and Tobago, the White House and the University of Chicago to name a few. The price of this awesomeness is a steep learning curve and a good amount of technical knowledge and concepts to be grasped. Additionally, as part of the price, this CMS suffers the drawback of having a long installation process, with multiple important intermediate steps from zero to launch. That being said, Drupal is a great choice of CMS for creating and maintaining a top-notch website with a lot of content, as it is known for its highly structured and efficient content representations. Drupal is additionally known for its capacity to support multiple websites easily within the same interface. So in case you own/manage a brand or a large company with multiple products and projects, or need a complex website with the ability to easily author and publish massive amounts of content, Drupal is a great choice for you. Drupal is functionally extensible with the help of additional pre-written code called modules, which are the equivalent of plugins in Drupal.

Older versions of Drupal were criticized for being a nightmare to cus- tomize, because the code is written in the procedural style of PHP4. Instead, the official recommendation for custom applications is the use of hooks, which is considered a bad practice in general because it leads to very messy code that is hard to look into or debug. The latest version of Drupal, Drupal 8, boasts of object oriented programming, a simpler, more intuitive UI for authoring, and RESTful practices which ensure working integrated experiences. If it weren’t for Drupal 8, Drupal would even be in this chapter.

Joomla

Joomla is also an open source content management software that special- izes in most areas that are similar to Drupal. While providing most of the advanced features for website development like Drupal, Joomla does so in a more user friendly manner. Though not as steep as that for Drupal, Joomla also has a considerable learning curve for the complete novice. Joomla is made with PHP and MySQL but in an object oriented architectural design, and using the MVC framework. Its function- ality can be extended with ‘Extensions’, the equivalent of ‘Modules’ in Drupal. Out of the big three CMSs, Joomla has the least number of extensions, templates and themes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enough to choose from. Joomla is easily the most customizable powerful CMS, so with a little know-how you can work wonders!

An added bonus with Joomla is the integrated support for multi-user sites like social networks, and back-end heavy sites like e-commerce sites. Drupal and WordPress require plugins to properly develop an ecommerce website. Some more nifty features include out-of-the-box Bootstrap integration in the templates for readymade mobile- friendly web pages. Joomla is used by major organizations like Linux (need we say more?) and Harvard University. Joomla also supports free hosting with a free sub-domain as in ‘www.joomla.com’

WordPress

For the aam aadmi who has heard a thing or two about websites, ‘blogs’ can be synonymous with ‘wordpress site’. Just goes to show how large of the market for easy content publishing they control. WordPress is mainly a CMS for blogging, and has good inbuilt SEO support that can even be enhanced with certain plugins. Although it too can be customized to just about any function with the use of plugins, excess third party code tends to make your site slow. Moreover, without the requirement of a certain degree of code comprehension, the customization isn’t as fine tuned as that on Drupal or Joomla. The admin panel is extremely intuitive (as non-technical as web development can get) and WordPress even offers paid hosting and custom domains. A great all in one solution for people who don’t want to get their hands dirty with code yet need extremely affordable online publishing!

WordPress easily has the largest collections of themes to choose from, but many of the good ones are premium. However it is a small price to pay compared to hiring a good designer! If you are not an organization with highly complex marketing and user experiences (like Nike’s custom UI billboards) or you really don’t want to learn to code, WordPress is easily your best bet! Better yet, read on…

Bonus: Special Mentions

In today’s world, programming languages are coming close to being as need-to-know as our mother tongue. That said, it is definitely a good idea to learn a bit, if only to stretch your brain. Consider the fact that the big three CMSs are just websites that configure websites. If you take a web developer video course and plough through it like you binge watch your favourite show, in a month you could be building your own custom CMS, streamlined to your needs! Nonetheless, here are some more free options that are especially optimized for certain types of content management.

Jekyll – If you purely want to publish content, like a blog, but without comments and databases and all that jazz, Jekyll is the solution for you! If you’ve never seen the terminal, this free software may look daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, content publishing will be a breeze! There’s good documentation available, as well as a free course on codeacademy for those who need a little more guidance. A good concept to have before using Jekyll is that of a JSON object. Jekyll is literally a gem, because it is written in Ruby. Also because it is blog aware (supports categories, posts, etc) so you can set a custom layout and then begin posting your static pages. What’s more, Jekyll also integrates with the free hosting on GitHub Pages! Contentful – Contentful describe themselves as a ‘content management developer platform, with an API at its core.’ This is a developer friendly CMS (as in, not user friendly), worth your notice if you preference is still leaning towards Drupal or Joomla. It is a great tool for literally managing content and then distributing it, as opposed to creating, formatting and pre- senting it as well. Editors can enter content into a special web interface for authoring, and the content gets returned as a JSON which can be requested as and when needed with an API call. They have an SDK for all popular languages, including JS, Node.JS, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Java, cURL. This way you can push content easily to wherever you need to, be it mobile or website, while leaving the designers to do their job. They have different pricing plans for different requirements, and a 30 day trial. They also have a free pricing plan for enthusiasts, but if you’re a professional, maybe you wouldn’t mind paying for an automated hassle-free ‘one size fits all’ automated backend that scales with your needs. Nike installed interactive wall-touchscreens in its flagship showrooms, for users to see social data from previous buyers, and product information. These systems use the Contentful API to deliver their custom content. If you have any unconventional use in mind, head to www.contentful.com!