CMS or Framework ground-up? [closed]
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Improve this questionI just got done reading this thread... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/588888/best-cms-for-a-corpor开发者_如何转开发ate-web-presence
Which was the closest thing I could find on the web. I too am looking to redesign a website for a corporation. I am the marketing director, not a developer.
I have researched this subject in many places. I won't say everywhere. I have read: http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/content-management-systems-just-dont-work/ and http://www.webdesignish.com/the-best-web-development-frameworks.html and dabbled at www.cmsmatrix.org and www.bestwebframeworks.com under the PHP area. I have read at least a few dozen articles from various places, some of them including the providers websites or forums.
I have read nearly as much as I can in the time I gave myself.. so with a little knowledge on all these areas I want to reach out to a community that has more experience.
Background: Manufacturer website, one location, no branches. One marketing/IT guy. Utilizes dreamweaver for all web editing needs. Knows ultra-basic html only for text and image placement and editing. I need to be pointed in the direction of a cost-effective design solution with either a framework or combination thereof, or a CMS that can give me what I need. The best example of what I want the site to look like would be a cross between tripplite dot com and logitech dot com, with some elements from a site like sonicwall dot com. I need an animated menu system but with images, so size customization is necessary. Simple animations for rollovers and click reactions so that users can tell when they have selected something. Page content does not change often, with most edits being to PDF documents. At present, I name all major documents (such as a 2011 catalog) with the same filename, and simply replace the document with the latest version via FTP. Nearly every other page will be a static page with static text and images. I might request polish on all other pages after the development is complete. Our site might end up being somewhere around 50 pages after this redesign.
It has been suggested to me to have the site designed in Wordpress by a pro, but everything I HAD read before reading the first-mentioned thread posted here said that I shouldnt use it because of content and bug issues. I believe that wordpress can provide a robust and feature rich corporate website that isn't just another blog or news site... I have seen a few examples like networksolutions dot com.
Project 1 is a redesign and new look. Project 2-9 goes through a parts library with thumbnails, build-to-quote system similar to a shopping cart but with no payments (and no PCI compliance), an e-page flip type catalog revision, and login portals with per user/entity content such as order history, order documentation/records and open-order production status and shipping information. We want it all. But where to go?
I have so far looked at for a CMS: Wordpress, Drupal, Radiant CMS, concrete5 (and spoke with Franz a tad), and synType CMS.
To go the framework route with PHP: yii, codeigniter, akelos, symfony, prado, cakephp and solarphp
The other ones I have heard many developers praising were jquery, dojo and django but im not sure yet if they are utilized in any other solutions that I listed.
Tomorrow I will be going through the definitions and such at bestwebframeworks to better learn about the once I had chosen and pit them against one another.
I would really appreciate any help in evaluating which platform would best suit me based on the information that I have provided above. Feel free to ask any other questions that may help narrow the list.
Thank you all in advance.
Before determining how to proceed, you need to as a few important questions -
- Is your company in business to make money?
- Do you ever expect potential customers to view your website?
- Are you a trained designer with experience in usability and best practices?
- Can you write maintainable, scalable, and standards compliant code?
Chances are, you should seriously consider hiring a professional for the job. A business website is often the first point of contact with a potential client and first impressions are hard to fix. If your site looks like your 8th grade nephew designed it with a full plate of mystery meat navigation and cross browser compatibility issues, you are likely going to lose clients before you even get a chance to talk to them.
There are likely a multitude of additional features and functions that your website could perform if you knew about them. A reputable professional would be able to assess the needs of your business and recommend website functionality to match. As they say, you don't know what you don't know.
My recommendation would be to beg and plead for a budget to get a website built by someone who knows what they are doing. A well built website will have tremendous ROI and pay for itself easily.
It looks like your needs are primarily front-end, I would recommend a JavaScript framework, like ExtJS or jQuery, I really like ExtJS. Then you could pair it up with some kind of python, ruby, php CMS back-end. Right now I am developing my website www.coffeedig.com (currently still in development) in ExtJS with a Django back-end. I picked ExtJS cause I have a lot of experience in it. I picked Django even though I had very little experience in python but python seemed like the best language to me. I all depends on your needs and your developers skills/experience though. Locally at my work we have about 3 to 1 ratio of developers to architects. It takes a lot of time to maintain and develop a CMS from scratch. So I would recommended against that. I wish I knew more on how large your development team was but personally I would give them a list and have them try the frameworks out and see what feels right to them. Also documentation and community support are two very important things.
Oh. I can see from your post your are trying hard to find a proper solution for your needs.
Since you will probably not be implementing / deploying the solution yourself, I can assure you that whatever option you choose, it is the developpers putting together the project that will make the difference. You can have competent developpers on your team, but if they have to use a tool they are not familiar with, the result may be deceiving.
The choice you need to make from what I read in your post is if you want to use a framework, where developpers will be implementing from the ground-up, or using a pre-built application ready made for content management (CMS) that can be tailored to your needs.
All the popular languages offer a multitude of frameworks that have all been tried and tested.
PHP has Zend Framework, Drupal, Symfony, and many, many more.
Python has Rails, Zope, Pylon, Django, etc.
All these could be viable choices, the main question is still, do you need an application with specific needs and business processes integrated that would be better suited with a framework to ease develppment, or do you simply need to have an easy way to show your products online and have an easy way to create and organise content? I suggest you not re-invent the wheel, if your needs are just for regular web-publishing, a content management system would reduce your costs.
Look around and search for demos of the solutions your are interested in, test-drive before you make a choice. And be sure to have a competent ressource available for the solution you choose, because in the end it is the developping teams competence with the product that will dictate the success of the result.
By the way, JQuery is a great library but is not what you are looking for, chances are it will be integrated in whatever platform / framework you choose! :)
My 2 cents, good-luck!
Frankly, it sounds to me that you have a mostly static website, with occasional PDF updates.
At the same time it doesn't sound like you have the skills to craft your web site by hand.
You also seem to have some familiarity with Dreamweaver, which a pretty scary powerful piece of software.
If it were me, I'd hire a solid Dreamweaver web designer that simply leverages DW for your site, and basically keep it static. With enough CSS and possibly JS work, the pages will remain static pages, and if you need to do minor updates, you're likely capable enough to do that on your own. Then simply sync up the site from your local copy.
The advantage of this is simplicity. Simplicity for you, simplicity for possibly future contractors, etc. If you're not planning on a lot of "interactive" features that require server side support, then keeping the site as static and simple as practical is a smart move.
Uploading a PDF takes simple training, not a CMS. And Dreamweaver should be more than capable front end to manage much of that for you.
Addenda:
I understand about your future plans, but those later phases are night and day beyond Phase 1. This first phase, this cosmetic and functional redesign, is essentially a marketing and branding phase. The skill set needed to implement it is quite different from Phases 2-9.
You can talk with your front end designer about the later phases, in terms of overall presentation, but the person implementing your front end will likely be quite different from the person implementing the back end.
Once you have finished with the Phase 1, the back end integration will be able to leverage the assets created when developing the later phases. None of this initial work will be "wasted". But you have the benefit of being able to move forward with your current toolset and releasing it early, while Phase 2+ are spec'd, developed, tested, and later deployed.
A CMS toolset, at this point in the process, is really a distraction.
In the end, the choice of toolset is really secondary to the person or team that you select to complete the other phases. It is good to be aware of the tool market, and the choices and their assorted advantages/disadvantages, but in the end what is going to matter most is the user interface that you as de facto maintainer are going to be interacting with day by day, and the ongoing maintenance of this system.
If you were buying a delivery truck, you no doubt would be selecting one based on a combination of how it fits your needs and overall cost of ownership versus shopping around to dealers "You know, I really like Volvos". You'll likely not care so much about how the engine works, or the truck is designed. As long as it starts and turns and stops like it's supposed to, with the costs you expected to pay, you'd likely be happy with it.
If you have a favorite, then fine. Likely whatever you pick isn't going to matter much in the end, assuming it's reasonably mainstream. If you don't have a favorite, then it's not particularly important. And if you don't have a favorite, it's not important at all for Phase 1.
But like a truck, it's more important to have a good mechanic. If you have a mechanic that likes Fords and is well experienced with them, you might want to seriously look at a Ford. Trucks are easy to find. Good mechanics, not so much.
Right now, Phase 1, it's about layout, color, and image. Things mechanics and programmers are notoriously bad at. Get this done now, with the right people, using tools you know since you have to support it short to mid-term.
Then look for some good people you trust to work with on the backend. They can use what you have done in Phase 1, and make it work with whatever tools they'll be using to do what, in the end, is most important to you.
Check out silverstripe, an amazing CMS probably better than most, most people just don't know about it. Amazingly easy to template and super easy to extend. It's also very powerful like unto Drupal. http://www.silverstripe.org/
Update:
Sorry guys didn't mean to make it seem like an ad. And no I am not affiliated with silverstripe I just really like it.
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