There are so many programs you can use to create websites and designers are surely aware of the very best ones. Problems appear when building a site. This is needed for many possible reasons, like presenting a portfolio or just showing the work on a website as opposed to an archive. Thankfully, CMS (content management system) platforms are now available and they include numerous features you can use to configure the site, post articles, generate pages dynamically and much more.
What most people do not realize is that a web designer is not a web developer. Dealing with the backend of site creation is not usually in the knowledge realm. Using a CMS system is a necessity. If you are in such a situation, here are the best CMS options available for you right now.
WordPress
WordPress should not be a surprise for anyone since it is the most used CMS available at the moment. While it started as a platform for blogging, it is now highly complex and can be used for basically any site type possible. The reason why it is considered to be the best is that it is really easy to use. Web designers prefer it because of how fast everything is but customization options are not full. Even with a paid theme it will be a little difficult to do everything you might want.
Drupal
Drupal is a favorite CMS for web developers because it can be completely customizable when you have the necessary knowledge. This means that it is not necessarily great for a web designer when compared with WordPress. However, there are numerous tutorials available if you want to learn what you have to do. There are over 30,000 add-on modules that can be utilized so as a web designer you can end up with something that is exactly as you want it to be. It just takes more work to get it done. Obviously, outsourcing is something you can consider.
Joomla
Joomla is best described as the middle grown between WordPress and Drupal. It can be customized more than WordPress and can be used in an easier way than Drupal. The developer community is large so support is available. However, there are limited add-ons available. You can end up a little reliant on hiring developers when you need some core capabilities that are not offered in the core CMS files.
Squarespace
Squarespace offers different tools that are easy-to-use to design your site and content management is easy. The platform is gaining popularity at the moment so it should be mentioned. An alternative to it would be LightCMS but a big advantage is that you can so easily important content from WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr and Blogger. However, if you choose this platform, keep in mind that export is limited to solely WordPress.
Using Squarespace starts with choosing one of the built-in templates. Then, you access control panels in order to customize your website. The interface is slick and style editor gives you the possibility to modify everything you want in regards to text used. Custom CSS should be considered though when you need formatting options that are more-extensive.
