Which CMS Should Use?
-
I have a desinger working on a new webiste and he's suggesting that WP creates design limitations (He's doing quite a bit of HTML 5 I believe...I'm not sure) and obviosly has secruity concerns.
He suggested TextPattern, which I've never heard of. Has anyone had any experience with it?
Also, what CMS are you using (besides WP) that you really like and is SEO friendly?
Thanks
-
We have sites built in Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and also custom built CMS's.
All of these are search engine friendly. Wordpress in particular has a number of excellent SEO guidance tools to put you on the right track.
The consensus of opinion from the comments given is that you need to question your web developer's opinions. Making the wrong choices now will only land you in hot water in the future.
Good luck with your project
-
The CMS should be up to the designer to use - obviously you as a client should make sure that there is a good product delivery and that the back-end meets your expectations.
I would agree with your Developer that WordPress is very limiting. Whilst good for Blogs and News-oriented websites it was not built to cater for other websites. CMS like TextPattern or Symphony allow much better control on the structure and output, allowing for better dissection re-use of code and potentially better SEO. I've been using Symphony for over 2 years and I've found it brilliant - I can control and make small SEO tasks much simpler, as I structure the data the way I would like it, rather the standard way the CMS thinks is correct.
Note that SEO has nothing to do with the CMS itself, its more about the implementation as done by your developer. Whilst WordPress has some plugins to make this easier it is not necessarily the only and best way.
-
I really can't sing Wordpress praises highly enough. By far it has given me and my clients the best results from an SEO perspective, as well as allowing even the most basic of users to add and update content. In terms of security, I recommend Sucuri.net which will monitor and fix any hack/virus/malware etc and they provide great advice and support to keep your WP install secure.
-
textpattern was all the rave couple of years ago with easy to use templating Designers were free to achieve various looks and designs with html and no php when wordpress was not know for it flexibility beyond blogging platform. Those were early days of wordpress when it was first ported from b2. since than thanks to open source wp community wordpress and many other far eclipsed textpattern and those benefits that text pattern initially offered. Many will tell you chose a cms per project basis as many are good at one thing while not at other but i will say that with joomla and wordpress and their most valuable asset their ecosistem of devs and plugins you will be hard pressed to find a typensite that you cannot build with these top 2 free cms platforms...
sorry for typos hate typing on my pad
-
Wordpress for me. There's a great theme designed specifically for customization (weaver), blank themes with no CSS whatsoever so you have total control and the updates/bug fixes and support are consistent. Joomla is sluggish, even with cache modules and Drupal, which I really wanted to like, is downright annoying. I've had a support question in their forum for 3 months now with no response.
-
I'm a huge fan of MODX. Integrating custom design is very easy to learn and the community rocks. You have 100% control over all markup output. No "theming" structure to learn like most CMSs.
-
I think you might want to consider finding a new designer / developer Creating this type of visual is not a problem in wordpress. It may jsut be that your designer si nto overly confident with wordprss customisations so maybe you need to look for someone who is? I don't have any experience with textpattern, but wordpress could certainly create this type of visual. By the looks if it this is just an ordered list with some CSS styling.
I would certainly recommend go wth wordpress over textpattern for maintainability - if your designer can't continue to support your website for any reason getting someone with textpattern knowledge is going to be much harder than wordpress, plus wordpress has all of the cool SEO plugins that ahve already been discussed by others.
-
I've heard of textpattern but never really used it. It's WP all the way for me. You can chop it and change it to fit your needs and the fact that there is so much support out there when you hit a brick wall there's always someone who can help.
-
If you like at this site and scroll a little beneath the fold you'll see a visual representation of the business process. I asked for a similar visual but the desinger mentioned he wasn't sure if he could do it in WordPress. What do you think?
-
The site's going to be used for an SEO consultany.
-
Excellent Point.
-
Hi Spencer, I only have experieince with 2 CMS's. I was an early adopter of Word Press so I wouldn't know my way iaround n it at all anymore as it's changed so much. I currently use Joomla 1.5 . It's relatively SE friendly, but then again so is WP theses days (so I've heard) I've also heard the current WP is much easier to customise than the older versions.
What is the purpose of your website going to be? (eg. blog, ecommerce, etc.)
-
Hi Spencer,
I am a huge proponent of WordPress, and it is (in my opinion) the best SEO CMS available. For starters there are excellent Plugins such as HeadSpace2, and the All-In-One-SEO-Pack, which allow you to manage title tags, meta data, redirects, ect.
WordPress also has other excellent plugins for SEO including SEO Friendly Images, and SEO Tag Cloud. Also, WordPress has awesome sharing widgets such as Sexy Bookmarks.
So in conculsion any design limitations are far outweighed by the overwhelming amount of SEO and sharing widgets available. The real limitations for WordPress is not in the design department it is in the Intranet department. However, if having an intranet is not important then I would say WordPress all the way.
C
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using Button Links vs Sidebar Menu
I have a services page with a lot of rich text and a slideshow of images. Currently, I am using a column of buttons to various services, and am wondering if a sidebar menu would be more effective for Google to crawl and rank?
Web Design | | cinchmedia0 -
CMS dynamicly created pages indexed?
Hey Moz'erz, Looking at the indexed pages of my clients eCommerce website I noticed that dynamically created pages are being indexed. For example this page does not "exist" but is created by a drop down filter menu that sorts by product tag: /collections/tools/TAG I can only conclude that this page got indexed either through a backlink or once upon a time there was an internal link pointing to this URL and got indexed (currently there is not). Are either of these cases possibilities? In either case before considering removal or any action I would of-course reference analytics to check for conversions, traffic and any backlinks for those "pages". I believe at the end of the day is recommend a drop down filer that doesn't create new pages as the best solution. Thoughts, comments and experience is greatly welcomed 🙂
Web Design | | paul-bold0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect when using Wordpress for your Blog?
I have a site entirely done in html, no CMS used. The blog page however, is wordpress. Wondering if this will effect us negatively in terms of SEO, having the blog that is linked to our site, a wordpress site. My gut is absolutely not, but the questions was asked....what do you think?
Web Design | | cschwartzel0 -
Using More Info javascript:toggleDisplay tag for More info text
Is there any harm in using javascript so a user can "toggle" open or closed additional text on a website? For example, if a user wants to read more about something, they can click on "More Info" and the text would then appear. Google is able to read the text, because I chose a random 8 word section of the text within the More Info and pasted it into a Google Search and the website showed up in search results. Just wondering if using this technique would have any negative impact. Here's what the code would look like:
Web Design | | EEE3
<a <span="">title</a><a <span="">="Show Tables" href="</a><a class=" " target="_blank">javascript:toggleDisplay('table1')</a>">More Info style="display: none;" id="table1"> this is where the text would be, and from this section was where I grabbed text to search with in google. Then in the footer, here is the script needed so the more info will work: I am by no means an expert in coding/html/javascript. Thanks!0 -
Open Source CMS
I have read a few different blogs across the web and a few asking direct questions here on SEOMoz, but I wanted to find out a general idea from the smartest people on the web (Mozzers) what you prefer to use to design and maintain your websites. Do you use a CMS such as Joomla, WordPress, or DNN? Or do you hard code everything on your site? Do you have a strong feeling on the SEO Benefits of one or the other?
Web Design | | KJ-Rodgers1 -
Website using javascript to serve up content - SEO Friendly?
I'm checking out a dentist website http://www.sagedentalnj.com/ I was referred by a friend so just taking a little peek at it. When you click on the menu items, the url at the top doesn't change. When you view source, the page titles are all the same. when I do site:http://www.sagedentalnj.com/ none of his pages are indexed by google. What can be done with his site so that google sees his pages? Maybe submit sitemap?
Web Design | | Czubmeister0 -
Site Change / CMS Change
Hi Guys I have a very good client with whom we have been working with for over 2 years. When we 1st arrived, their website was built in Wordpress. During our SEO, the dleted the site and changed it to Drupal over night. Youc an imagin i went balistic and its been a horrid year in getting all the rrors down and redirects etc. Finally done I have just been informed that they will be deleting the website from Drupal to Joomla again! This is crazy as we have finally fix all the rrors and are driving quality traffic to the site. Now its back to square one... What do i do? ps the change from Drupal to Joomla is due to MYSQL issues
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
What CMS system is best?
Hi Guys, I am in the process of developing some new areas of work and a good CMS is going to be required to make my SEO and everything included work to its best. What CMS systems are the best ones to use from an SEO prospective and generally all round? Thanks
Web Design | | wazza19850