What is the best CMS to build Local Portal

This thread and others might interest you over at the Local Biz Builders forum:

LocalBizBuilders

Cheers
Sue

Hi Hardy,

if you are familiar with wp, it can be developed into a portal to a good and easy. some plugins also support.

Hey Hardy-

If you don't mind me adding my two cents here, and keep in mind that I have not built a local portal before, but here's how I see your situation:

1) You're not currently very tech-savvy.
2) You want to build the site right the first time as opposed to having to scrap your CMS down the road when the site gets heavy traffic.
3) You'd prefer to build the site as cheaply as possible.

Unfortunately from where I stand these 3 points don't mesh very well. If you want to achieve #2 (and I certainly think you're wise to do so!), you're going to have to change either #1 or #3.

That is, building the site the right way with a free solution (wordpress, for example) will most likely require you to spend a lot of time learning how it works, slugging through the code and getting things just so. Be prepared to get frustrated and pull your hair out. That's the inevitability of climbing the learning curve. We all have to go through it

On the other hand, if you're willing to spend some money, other alternatives open. You could buy a script that's designed for local portals already. You'll likely save yourself a lot of time and frustration. But this route has its downsides to because 1) gaining a little technical knowledge yourself is never a bad thing IMO because it makes you more capable of dealing with small issues down the road and/or communicating with coders that you hire to help you and 2) if/when you ask a coder to help you with that specialized script down the road, the chances of them being familiar with that as opposed to a more ubiquitous solution like Wordpress are lower, and therefore it will probably be more expensive.

Anyway, that's how things look for you from where I stand. Hope that gives you a bit more realistic appraisal of the situation.

You might consider CMS Made Simple (cmsmadesimple.org). It is the easiest to use CMS I have worked with, and does not have the steep learning curve that some of the others have. It's also open-source.

1. Drupal is the Best/Strongest but also a little difficult. (get it built for you and you laughing)

2. Wordpress is the Easiest and Fastest to throw together (although not a True CMS)

3. Joomla Is not Too hard fairly flexible and easy to find plugins and competitive prices for help building it out.

That is where you stand and basically all you need to know to make your decision.

If I could ever get a second to breath I would be building a portal as well. Most of my sites are wordpress but for my Portal I would Probably use Joomla. UNLESS I got a decent price for having 1 built then it would be Drupal.