I have been using several CMS to build my business websites, namely WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Movable Type – also those free blogging platforms, such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com. I do favour CMSs that are open source, with strong communities.
The question I often read from the web is: Which one is the best?
First things first: Choose the CMS you will stick your business website to for a lifetime
As I have tried several CMS, all I can say is that each CMS has it’s own pros and cons, thus each CMS can serve you better for a certain type of website you want to build.
Be cautious – consider your options well BEFORE you decide which CMS to use; you need to do your due diligence in choosing the right CMS because once you decide, you will stuck with the CMS for quite a long time, if not for a lifetime. That being said, migrating to another CMS is possible, but that would be resource intensive, not mentioning the downtime involved during the transition, which will annoy some site visitors.
Which CMS is the best for my small business website?
For a small business website, the CMS to choose is depending on the purpose of the website.
Are you going to build a small business blog? If so, WordPress should be your choice of open-source CMS as it’s developed to be end user-friendly, allowing someone with little or no coding knowledge to run a fully functioned blog that serves it purpose well.
If you are going to build a fully-functioned, multi-purpose small business website that will have everything inside – image gallery, e-commerce store, articles, blogs, and company information – with the future in mind, I recommend you to use Joomla.
Joomla is open-source and friendly to all types of users – end-users, web designers, web developers, etc., making it flexible in answering any needs. It won’t probably help you to run a small business website right out of the box without coding knowledge, but understanding how Joomla works, the add-ons, the tagging system, etc. can help you run a successful small business website without touching the codes.
The next question: Which web hosting is friendly for my Joomla-powered small business website?
The answer is pretty straightforward; whenever possible, always look for web hosting providers that offer specific features for specific website scripts. In this case, I recommend you to sign up for Joomla Hosting for your Joomla-powered business website.
Joomla hosting provider can offer you 1-click Joomla installation (huge time-saver) and – most importantly – well-optimized hosting for Joomla, along with other “standard” features, such as unlimited disk space and bandwidth, etc. The latter is important as not all web hosting providers can accommodate every CMS available on the Net today. Not-optimized hosting for a certain CMS will require you to request for certain web server setup from your web hosting providers, which is resource-consuming.
Of course, your next step would be choosing the Best Joomla Hosting solution for your business website. I recommend you to look for such information from both customer reviews and trusted web hosting review sites.
Good luck in building a great website that can serve your small business well!
Ivan Widjaya
On small business website development
Image: renjith krishnan