Frequently Asked Question - Can this CMS do this thing?
If you spend any time at all reading about web development on the Internet, you'll very quickly realise that one of the most common questions is "Can (Drupal / Wordpress / Joomla) do (insert trivial task)?"
It's easy to get frustrated with the endless stream of such questions, but it reveals an underlying challenge that people out there in the real world struggle with: they want to make sure they're choosing the right software to do the job!
Well, I'm here to tell you today, the answer to this most common of questions is this: If you have to ask, then the answer is "yes".
The reality is this: If you are debating what CMS to use for your website, then the answer is pretty simple. It doesn't really matter, because they can all do what it is you're trying to do. Seriously. Gone are the bad old days of the early 2000s, CMSes these days are mature pieces of software, and they can be made to do pretty much whatever you want. The only real difference between any of them is how easily they can be bent to your will.
This is why the most important determining factor for choosing a CMS is simple: what platform are your developers most comfortable with? Whatever CMS they are the most skilled with is the one you're going to get the best results out of. That's it. End of story. Yes, there are arguments to be made that if you have complex content requirements and lots of custom functionality, you should tend towards a CMS that's designed for developers to get the most out of, like Drupal, but for most clients, this simply isn't an issue, and you'll KNOW if your requirements are that complex, because you'll have burnt yourself already on failed projects with the wrong tech - but that is a whole other blog post.
Another oft-heard complaint is that clients are trying to "future proof" themselves, by choosing a technology that will grow with them. Well, sorry to say this guys, but pretty much every CMS promises this, and pretty much no CMS really delivers it. Migrating between major versions of a CMS can be just as complex as migrating between two different CMSes. No matter what you do, there's ALWAYS going to be some degree of vendor lock in. So relax, your choice of CMS really isn't that important! Go with one that's well supported and that your developers are happy with, and you'll end up just fine.
Assembler is a web design agency based in Perth, Western Australia. This blog is intended to be an informal, behind the scenes look into the web design and development industry. If you like our content, please follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook!