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Static or Dynamic Websites?

I am one of those people who enjoy building websites. I have tried many different types of HTML website publishing software applications over the years and reckon that I have produced some functional and reasonably well optimised websites. However, updating html files and then uploading them to the server via and FTP client is a bit of a chore. It would seem that dynamic web sites with content management systems are now the way to go.

Web 2.0

The popularity of dynamic websites and content management systems (CMS) on the web has flourished with the advent of Web 2.0. The web is full of beautifully crafted websites and blogs many of which have been designed and built by people with very little knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP or any of the coding associated with website building. Which dynamic website publishing software to use is something that, up until the past few months, I have pondered over. Two of the popular applications available are WordPress and Joomla. I have firmly decided on using WordPress in order to power my blogs and indeed my websites but what made me choose WordPress over the myriad of dynamic content publishing systems available out there?

Joomla

Joomla has attracted a significant following since its inception in 2005. What makes it different from many of the other systems out there is its highly modular approach. It is a free CMS that can be customised into just about any configuration you want. The available extensions for Joomla used to be called Mambots (due to the fact that Joomla is an offshoot of Mambo) however, they are now given the generic name ‘plugins’.  Joomla has an enthusiastic developer community and is already one of the best supported CMSs, however most of the addons and plugins are commercial and therefore design and functionability comes at a price.

Having experimented with Joomla installed onto WAMP (a localhost server application) I found configuration of the application tricky and the customisation of Joomla even trickier. After much tinkering around with Joomla I found I got a little frustrated with the backend administration section. I have seen a lot of websites designed using Joomla and I have to say that they look impressive however for the end user with less technical know how it is a tricky system to get to grips with.  For anyone like me who is having problems with Joomla there are specialist Joomla developers who can produce top class website designs.

WordPress

Launched in 2003, WordPress has without doubt become the most popular hosted blog service and the first to take that step into the world of CMS. In use, WordPress is highly rated for its easy installation and configuration. The are a vast amount of developers out there that are creating very useful plugins to further develop the system with the minimum of user intervention. This makes it ideal for the novice user who can have a functional blog or CMS website up and running in no time at all.

The proliferation of free and reasonably priced themes and templates out there also make it easy for the less tech-savvy user to have a reasonably personalised website. There are also lots of WordPress developers in the market place who for a modest fee will create a bespoke template or customise a website to suit the needs of anyone, be it personal or business. For anyone that fancies a go at tweaking the templates to get an even more personal look to their webiste there are a number of sources of good information on ‘how to’ on the internet and also theme producing software to assist you with the process. The software I use to create WordPress Themes is Artisteer. This software is so easy to use and can assist the user in producing bespoke and personalised websites, not only in WordPress but also in Joomla, Drupal, Blogger, DotNetNuke, HTML and one or two other formats.

I know one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor but I personally choose to work with WordPress because of its ease of installation and configuration making it, in my view, the best all round blogging and CMS platform for us novices at the moment.

What do you think? Do you prefer Joomla or WordPress? or is there some other Content Management System that you put forward?

I would love to hear what you think.

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