So, I'm getting bored with Wordpress. It's great, don't get me wrong, but I'm starting to wondering what else is out there for building mid-sized corporate sites?

The last site I built is around 30 pages - when viewed in the Wordpress page manager it looks pretty unweildy, just a huge list of pages with no real hierarchy, making it hard for a client to make sense of.

I also think the Wordpress backend is a bit clumsy looking, especially if you are using it with paying customers - I want something a bit slicker and more commerical looking. Enterprise-level almost I guess, but still very affordable. Yes there is the Tiger admin theme etc but it doesn't work in IE, so not much cop for Joe Public.

I'm going to look into Drupal and Expression Engine I think, though I think Drupal might be overkill for a standard this is who we are/what we do type of website. Whatever the CMS it needs to have great support from other users via a forum, and tons of plugins. That much I know from Wordpress! Ability to natively handle document upload/insertion, inline images, easy linking to other pages etc a boon.

Interested to hear your thoughts.

I just mean the styling of the control panel, not the database structure (I wouldn't really look at that much cos mySQL does my head in!)

Aesthetically and in terms of usability I think the control panel is a bit limited. My clients seeme to get confused by it... I think it's more the image/document management than anything.

Wordpress is the simplest CMS out there. For anything that is 30 pages or less Wordpress is the best. Any CMS has a little learning curve.

Alternatively you could use Drupal. Drupal is a very powerful system and has tonnes of support from commercial companies. The best part is the theme does not change from a web interface to the admin interface - admin users can edit posts on the same page as they view them. It also doesnt spout inline styles, so it is completely CSS and web standards friendly (though the default theme is using tables). It has a learning curve for the developer though.

If it's good commercial paying client I wouldn’t even consider using open source like Word Press or Drupal.
I probably will look at some commercial application.
The problem with CMS it's hard to satisfy everybody with one system from a shelf and a lot time it takes individual approach for specific company needs.
I agree I tried Word Press couple times and didn't like it a bit.


Best, DS

It's true you can go wrong even with commercial application.
Most of the open source applications have zero support or only community support which in most cases doesn't help much. Documentation is limited as well if there is any.
Hmm. What else? Number of problems and bugs in application security issues.
As far as blog and using WordPress I tried bunch of different blogs applications in a past but end up using MT Movable Type. Which is far better and advanced application then WordPress I wouldn’t even compare them at this point.

Best, DS

Hmm points taken.

Although it's not beautiful, the Wordpress backend can at least be simplified so that it doesn't bamboozle a client.

I need to try out Joomla though to see for myself how it looks/works.

BTW, one could see a list of sites that used Plone in some way.

I tried CMS made simple but it fell down at the first hurdle. But I can't remember what that hurdle was right now, possibly the installation and nice urls config I think!

MTV UK is done with Drupal- wow! That is impressive, I'm tempted to have a look at this more closely now...