Frustrated with your blog? While blogging platforms are easy to use – a blog is the easiest Web site you’ll ever create – blogging platforms also have limitations if you’re set on building a major authoritative Web site using a blog.
The biggest limitation is the chronological format of a blog. As you post to your blog, older posts slip off the radar, and you’ve got to make a conscious decision to bring your older material to the attention of new readers.
If you blog several times a day, older posts vanish quickly, so you may be ready for a “bigger” blog: a Content Management System (CMS.)
When you use a CMS like Joomla or one of the dozens of other open source CMS systems, you have much more control of your content. You can even turn a WordPress blog into a CMS with the addition of plug-ins which let you create a customizable front page and other content pages for your blog.
The biggest difference between a blog and a CMS is control of your content, so you can present your most important content to your readers on a front page. A CMS gives you much more content control than you have with a simple blog, and it’s ideal if you’re building a big blog with several contributors.
A CMS system also features different page types which pull content from posts, and present the content on a single page. For example, if you write feature articles for your blog, a CMS can pull articles on a specific topic together to present them on a single page, which is automatically updated as you add more feature articles.
CMS blogging systems to consider
As stated, there are dozens of free open source (free) CMS, and many commercial ones as well.
Joomla is one of the most popular: think of Joomla as a blog on steroids. The system is easy to use, and perfect for a blog which has lots of content and several contributors. Joomla has dozens of plugins, so you can customize the program in any way you choose.
Drupal is another CMS which is very popular.
If you have a WordPress blog, and want to turn it into a CMS, you can do so – several developers offer commercial packages which turn WordPress into a very functional CMS.
Blog or CMS? The choice is up to you. If you’ve been blogging for a while, and are running into the blog format’s limitations, a CMS may be the perfect solution.
Dear Angela,
Thanks for this great blog post…
I appreciate your suggestions for how one might 'step up' to the next rung of online content sharing by using a CMS instead of a blogging platform, but I think it's important to point out that there are substantial cost differentials between these two options.
Even though the code itself is freely shared, open source solutions like Joomla and Drupal are not 'free' to the user, since the installation and integration costs of these systems are significant – they can run into the thousands of dollars – whereas blogging is almost always a much less expensive choice.
There are also simple solutions for the blog 'problems' you identified (i.e. pointing to content that has passed on to archives) that don't require moving to a CMS, like creating a menu of links to those important posts in a side column.
You can also create static 'pages' (at least in TypePad), for example, where you could presumably set up an rss feed that draws from other posts on your blog or other blogs just like you could on any xhtml page.
But your point about the limitations of a blog platform is well taken when the need is for a more robust content-rich web site, especially if one wants customized interactivity or password-protected member areas etc. on the site; situations where a CMS could be a far better solution.
Amy Lenzo
The Beauty Dialogues
I'd also consider TextPattern. I use it for all my client's sites, but it has the added advantage of having a built-in blog system as its core as opposed to some CMS systems that integrate the blog as a 'plug-in'.
WordPress is certainly superior as just a blog system and it can be hijacked for other purposes. I love W/P and set up blogs and psuedo-blogs at ease with it in no time flat.
But for a more integrated dynamic custom site, I use TextPattern. Drupal and Joomla are a bit too top-heavy for me and make it tricky to customize the admin interface to allow clients to login and not mess things up.