The latest company news, new stock announcements, price changes, special offers... fresh, business-critical information needs to be added to your website immediately. With a content management system (CMS), you have the ability to edit and update your website – fast – helping you to make tactical decisions and stay competitive. We’ll design a CMS database that stores all of your content, with an easy-to-use interface that lets you add text and images – without your needing to know about HTML.
Isn't a bespoke system better than 'off-the-shelf'?
Unless your requirements are extremely specialised, bespoke systems are almost certainly an unwise choice. Why?
We continue to see organisations who come to us on the rebound from bespoke systems – with very negative experiences. A bespoke system may seem ideal at the outset. And cheaper. But running bespoke software has numerous disadvantages compared with standard commercial or open source systems.
Bespoke systems are often difficult to extend in the light of future needs...
· ...tie you in to the original agency;
· ...are probably not rigorously security tested by large numbers of independent developers;
· ...are unlikely to have new features added over time;
· ...lack the wide input base of thousands of people who have been there before.
Although we have used ready-made content management systems over the years, we no longer recommend them. (Though it could be more profitable for us in the short term, we would be doing you a dis-service.)
The popular open source system Drupal meets the requirements of an increasing number of projects that require a custom CMS. Our article why we like Drupal explains why.
What's right for our project?
We take time to understand your long-term aims before arriving at a solution. To keep your costs down, we'll always consider an open-source solution first – as no licence fees apply.
For a simple blog, WordPress has the advantage that many people already know how it works; so other bloggers are familiar with it as a platform for leaving comments and fuelling discussion. In this case the ready made product has the advantage.
When you need more specified functionality, Drupal is likely to be the best solution. An open source platform, Drupal is a mature project with thousands of contributed modules to extend the functionality of the core software.
It also has a large and active community of developers around the world. Because of the well documented infrastructure, it's easier for us to extend.
So your modest site can grow to become a community portal with user contributions. Or a pay-for-content publishing system with complex editing workflows. Or it could integrate with a CRM so you can effectively track leads and relationships.
Drupal can be as flexible as you need it to be.
