Websites and Content Management Systems

[Gear]

Well, I'm looking to rebuild my project's website because I'm sick of it. I was warned away by some people from using Wordpress because of various vague reasons to include ones involving security holes, and I gave Drupal a shot. But Drupal's driving me nuts because it's so inflexible and makes me work way too hard to accomplish stuff that Wordpress does for you. About 10 years ago, I could have built a webpage by hand, but if I did that now...it would look like I built it by hand 10 years ago.

So my question is, do you recommend any other CMS? Or perhaps do you think my avoidance of Wordpress is misguided?

[Reikun]

People's opinions of WP will vary a lot especially since it's one of the most popular "CMS"s used today. I personal don't like it because the design is inflexible IMO and yes, it often gets targeted/exploited security-wise, though I suspect it's more because it's just so prevalent so to target WP's security holes would allow a hacker/whoever to hijack more than one website easily.

Some WYSIWYG CMSs I've been eyeing but haven't tried out are:
http://www.impresspages.org/
http://www.concrete5.org/

Based on Concrete5's video on their site, it seems to run a lot like Weebly if you've ever used it. As stated earlier, both of those are WYSIWYG so you probably don't need much technical knowledge to create a layout that's functional for your purposes.

[Obscura]

I was using Blogger for about 8 months, and now Wordpress for about 4.

Wordpress seems to be working fine for me. Customizing a simple site and making it look fairly clean and polished was pretty easy. I much prefer Wordpress's templates over Blogger's. Again, this is coming from someone who wants to spend as minimal time as possible on website stuff, so YMMV.

Of course, my site is really simple. I don't have downloads or forums or anything fancy like that integrated with my blog. Just images, text, and links. The only issues I've been having are certain bouts of spam, that all appear at once as random comments. You can pretty much delete those, and Wordpress gives you authentication tools to minimize their appearance.

[leon]

@Obscura: Note that there is a *HUGE* difference between very limited wordpress.com (the one you are using) and wordpress.org (the open source software). Wordpress.com is a service using Wordpress software, while wordpress.org is the software itself. For example, the number of themes on wordpress.com is just a couple of hundreds, while the number of themes on wordpress.org is tens of thousands. And the difference in design options is just scratching the surface. Wordpress.org also allows plugins that add functionality and you can even add your own PHP code - making literally any web app in it. Wordpress.com can also be rather expensive, if you want some of their upgrades (for example, if your site is popular they will display advertisements on it and you need to pay $30/year to have them removed).

People's opinions of WP will vary a lot especially since it's one of the most popular "CMS"s used today. I personal don't like it because the design is inflexible IMO...

You are probably refering to wordpress.com. With some basic knowledge in HTML and CSS, Wordpress is fully customisable - just as much as a website built from scratch. That goes for wordpress.org (the software), wordpress.com (the service) has just a few themes included and doesn't allow editing them (you can buy limited customisability for $30/year).

...and yes, it often gets targeted/exploited security-wise, though I suspect it's more because it's just so prevalent so to target WP's security holes would allow a hacker/whoever to hijack more than one website easily.

Wordpress is indeed more prone to hacks because of this, after all over 20% of all sites on the internet are using it. Many security issues were uncovered in Wordpress in the past, but if you get hacked these days it's because you are using a weak password, you are not updating it regullary or you are using an insecure hosting service. The number of reported vulnerabilities found in Joomla or Drupal up to date is almost twice as high than in Wordpress today.

[Reikun]

You are probably refering to wordpress.com. With some basic knowledge in HTML and CSS, Wordpress is fully customisable - just as much as a website built from scratch. That goes for wordpress.org (the software), wordpress.com (the service) has just a few themes included and doesn't allow editing them (you can buy limited customisability for $30/year).

I've never used wordpress.org, so I can't really comment. I can often spot when a website/blog is run on wordpress regardless of how "customized" it is because for some reason people love using typical/generic design elements and it gets repetitive and boring to look at for me an a person interested in the visual arts. The nail in the coffin is when I see "Powered by Wordpress" in the footer OTL xD As I stated before, my dislike for WP is just personal preference. I'd just like to see more sites with original/thoughtful/unique layouts and the cost of WP's ease of use is a deluge of websites/blogs with essentially identical layouts with custom graphics swapped out.

...But that's getting a little off topic >___>

[leon]

By the way, there's a list of CMS and blogging software on OELVN Community Wiki. I added concrete5 to the list.

I can often spot when a website/blog is run on wordpress regardless of how "customized" it is because for some reason people love using typical/generic design elements and it gets repetitive and boring to look at for me an a person interested in the visual arts. The nail in the coffin is when I see "Powered by Wordpress" in the footer OTL xD

True that. In fact a lot of people won't even bother changing the default theme. On the other hand if a site is fully customized (for example http://www.wowtoys.com/) you won't even notice it's running on Wordpress, without checking the source code.

[vividXP]

Tumblr, not much of a CMS but I've seen people do good things with it.
Is MoveableType still around (and free)? IMO harder to customize than wordpress is, but also worth looking into.
I was browsing around and found this cms called Koken, but it may or may not work for you depending on what kind of site it is.

However, imo wordpress is where it's at for a reason. If you really don't like the themes you can always create/buy more custom ones.