CMS or hand-coded?

Hi All,

I already have one tutorial type site and I am coding it by hand. For the most part the main categories are set and it's simply a matter of updating 3 pages to add a new tute.

I'm thinking of creating a new tutorial site where there will likely be continuing changes (additions) in the categories. While I know the best solution is to use a CMS program, I don't like the idea of being dependent on someone else's abilities to keep my site running. After being down for 2 months because of the poor security of a directory script, I am hesitant to launch another site that somewhat puts me at the mercy of someone else.

Those of you that use CMS's, have you found them to be more robust and safe than directory scripts? Which one(s) would you recommend. The site I have in mind won't be a social-networking/voting type site (that's another project I'm toying with though).  I had thought about building a php site from scratch, but I would have to learn as I went and I don't want to take the time to do that and as a newbie I would be bound to make mistakes in the security of the database.

Since I am already familiar with 2 of the directory scripts, do you think it would be easier for me to create a pseudo article directory where I am the only article writer?

Any suggestions, comments?

personally I would look at something like wordpress or drupal, CMS just make your life easier in the long run, and while the downsides are much more bulk in terms of code (they run slightly slower) you have a community to support you.

I think its quite safe to use a well known CMS like joomla or drupal just make sure you keep an eye on the updates, so you can plug any security holes as they become known.

I setup a new site with wordpress in no-time, I think a blog type CMS is a good choice for your tutorial site.

I think WP is better a better choice because of the thousands of free templates.

Forget Joomla because you need to change it a lot to make it good for SEO

yep wordpress for its themes, or Drupal if you want something a bit more robust and more article based plugins.

yeah I'm sure it's much easier to show php code in your blogs with Drupal. :)

I would recommend Drupal for your idea.

I'm planning on custom coding my next site, even though I'm a newbie to PHP coding. I can always ask for help here, and I do have Justin and Chris as people I know I can trust if I make a big mistake.;)

In any case you should use a CMS. Instead of making something that you will regret check a few CMSs and see what is the best for you.

BTW Tim has wrote a great article in his blog about making a Drupal site look like Digg (I mean having the same functionality)

How hard is it to upgrade Drupal or WordPress? If a security patch is issued will it require redoing the templates?

Hasn't WP had a few somewhat recent security issues?

for drupal almost certainly not, its themes are self contained and are not part of the "core" also modules are uploaded to folders and rarely are any code edits done for wordpress depending on what plugins you have used it might mean theme edits

Wow, didn't know that. Most of the directory scripts require modifications to the templates.

you can upgrade the software without touching the themes in WP, but you need to check the plugin's.


this because there are 100 times more users ;)

Anyway Michele,

you can ask here for help for both CMS: drupal and WP :)

If you want to explore other great CMSs take a look at http://www.opensourcecms.com (demos) and http://www.cmsmatrix.org for more details on 100s of CMSs