My Designing Sucks - So...What is the Best CMS

[bigcat1967]

I have a site I want to build but the niche of it is pretty rare. I'm thinking that WP won't have a theme for it. Just wondering what is the best open source or free CMS out there that offers a huge variety of themes or templates.

Yes - I can do better in designing - but working full time job with a small SEO company on the side. Time is precious to me. Can anyone offer me a solution to my CMS question...

[Michael55555]

why don't you think wp could be used? what sort of theme do you want?

[PaulChester]

Hi,

If your site is so much of a niche that WP won't have a theme for it then it's almost certain no other CMS will have a usable theme available off the shelf.

Personally I'd stick with WP if you're familiar with it. It's easy to find developers for WP themes if you really need a custom built theme. Have you tried woothemes.com? Something like their Canvas theme is highly customisable just using their admin panel. I've bought it and can vouch for it (whatever that's worth!).

Paul.

[iAmNameLess]

Actually wordpress is the worst CMS out there for actual websites. It is meant to be used as a blog. Very easy to get a quick site up, but in regards to a professional website, you will need joomla or drupal.

[dwzemens]

I have to disagree. WordPress is a fully functioning CMS. There is very little you can't accomplish with WordPress. 99% of the websites I see won't reach the limits of WordPress.

[iAmNameLess]

Originally Posted by dwzemens

I have to disagree. WordPress is a fully functioning CMS. There is very little you can't accomplish with WordPress. 99% of the websites I see won't reach the limits of WordPress.

Okay, let me rephrase. Wordpress is great if you don't know anything about programming and want a cookie cutter website! Better?

I have never seen a WP site, that I was actually surprised it was wordpress. They all have the same look, and really, wordpress will not work for the majority of sites. It is good for blogs, as well as a 30 minute adsense site. Can it be used for a social network? Not really. Can it be used as a 2.0 authority, nope, not really. Pretty much anything that requires member interaction wordpress is not good for. Is it good for ecommerce? Nope. Only good for a couple products, definitely nothing like magento.

Point is, any true web designer will tell you, there is not a CMS that is good for everything. It is more ideal to use certain ones depending on the scope of the project.

Just like any programmer will tell you that sometimes php will be good enough, other times you will have to develop in ruby. There isn't one set that is ideal for EVERY website.

Adsense sites, wordpress is ideal, blogs, wordpress is ideal, ecommerce, magento. Wordpress is not the answer to everything, and I challenge you to build a site with each CMS so you actually know the difference.

[somacorellc]

The question was about themes, not wordpress functionality. Get a custom theme done if your designing sucks, look in the classified forum here or go to odesk.com or themeforest.com.

Wordpress has a multitude of shopping cart, social, and membership plugins that integrate seamlessly with wordpress itself. Buddypress, s2member, mingle forum, wp-commerce, wp-member, the list seriously goes on and on, just google some stuff.

Wordpres since version 2.x has been a fully functioning CMS, and to say that it's just for cookie cutter websites shows that you really haven't been looking at any high quality wordpres sites in a while. I'd wager that you've seen quite a few that you didn't realize were wordpress.

On another note the wordpress codebase is excellently documented and highly customizable; to say that wordpress is for people who don't know programming is seriously shortsighted - would you rather reinvent the wheel or customize a powerful solution?

Originally Posted by iAmNameLess

Okay, let me rephrase. Wordpress is great if you don't know anything about programming and want a cookie cutter website! Better?

[yukon]

Anyone that can't replace an image in a Wordpress theme, needs to rconsider If IM is right for them.

Pick a theme swap out the images...