Selecting a content management system

[Chris Douthit]

Many websites today use a content management system; there are good and bad content management systems. A good content management system will help your SEO efforts a bad one will not.

For example, let’s say you want to buy a new hot tub cover. In your search engine efforts to located a quality cover you find the following 2 websites

www.website.com/hot-tub/covers.html

-and-

www.website.com/dis/product.php?=35934&id=847

In both cases these URLs are generated by the website’s content management system. It’s pretty easy to tell, the search engine friendly one also happens to be the user friendly one as well.

If you select a good content management system you can address both site and individual page issues that have an effect on the search engines capability to crawl though your website. Although there are a lot of things to consider when selecting a content management system, search engine optimization should be one of those things.

[lanta99]

+1 to the above post.

Although I personally haven't used WordPress for product launches and such, I've experimented with it a lot and it seems to be one of the best (and free) platforms out there.

Oh and for the people who do want to know what I use, I use WHMCS.

[webincomestream]

Yes, I agree about content management systems, however a lot of the SEO is your hands,; espe4cially with Wordpress. The BOMB with Wp is of course it's thousands of plug-ins. For SEO, one of the best is of course "All in 1 SEO Pack". With it installed, the SEO friendly links referenced in your thread actually becomes automatic. Regards, Ed

[John Taylor]

While I agree that Wordpress is very user friendly
and when set up properly can be search engine
friendly, I'd also suggest that you consider Joomla.

Many of my sites based on Joomla have achieved
better results than Wordpress based sites.

John

[darrenc@telus.net]

I manage a small hosting company and I can tell you right now, stay the heck away from Joomla. It is a quick ticket to being hacked.
One of our clients put it on our box and we have had nothing but trouble from their sites since. Twice the ISP has threatened us with a 24 hour shutdown notice due to the clients Joomla being hacked and attacking other sites.

While Joomla can do some nice things, it is not worth the hassles.

If you do use Joomla, then like Wordpress, stay on top of the updates. Patch often!

The problem a lot of people make is they install wordpress or joomla and then set and forget it.

[ianternet]

you just need to use wordpress. wordpress is one of the best and most easiest ones out there

[brandondrury]

I'm surprised that seo friendly link is still even an issue. Back in 2004 it was more of a problem, but even a low level programmer will have little trouble setting up mod rewrite.

Then again, I too have been using Wordpress for pretty much everything for nearly five years.

Brandon

[Antony Le]

I own 100's of websites... Wordpress is by far the easiest and by far the most efficient CMS i have come across. Very versatile as there are a ton of plugins, plenty of themes and much much more (Excellent for SEO). Give it a try

[Tony Marriott]

I must agree with the general opinion in the posts above. I use Wordpress extensively and learned it well enough in 1 day to put a site up. It fixes every issue of on page SEO with only a small amount of configuration and a few pluggins.

Tony

[Bill Ross]

Obviously the consensus here is Wordpress. I have to agree! But be careful with the standard HTML editor that comes with WP. Its horrible! Make sure you install another one before you start building your pages, etc.

Two I use and like are Dean's FCKEditor For Wordpress and Foliopress WYSIWYG. But there are lots of them available!

Hope that helps,
Bill

[darrenc@telus.net]

and with all that popularity, comes a dedicated and vibrant development community that is constantly fixing and upgrading wordpress.....

[RyanMoran]

I'll throw my vote in to echo the Wordpress gang.

I use it for just about EVERYTHING now...

My favorite theme site is Woothemes.com - costs a bit, but I really like there stuff.

I consulted with a new music company this week, and they were total newbs - I should them Wordpress and it was like they saw the light... (I wish all consulting gigs were that easy!)

[Michael Hiles]

I manage a small hosting company and I can tell you right now, stay the heck away from Joomla. It is a quick ticket to being hacked.
One of our clients put it on our box and we have had nothing but trouble from their sites since. Twice the ISP has threatened us with a 24 hour shutdown notice due to the clients Joomla being hacked and attacking other sites.

While Joomla can do some nice things, it is not worth the hassles.

If you do use Joomla, then like Wordpress, stay on top of the updates. Patch often!

The problem a lot of people make is they install wordpress or joomla and then set and forget it.




If you want Joomla features without the hacking, DotNetNuke rocks.

[Ralf Skirr]

Mh, I highly doubt that Wordpress is the 'best' CMS, it has quite a few aspects that are not so great.

Popularity does not necessarily equal quality. :-) That's especially true for many things popular in the IM niche, isn't it?

But wordpress seems to be the CMS with the most plugins and themes available.
For Internet marketers there's a ton of plugins and specialized themes that you won't find for other CMSs.

About Joomla: I found it to be a mess when I tested it a few years back. Maybe it's better now. But I also find that IMers using Joomla build web sites with zero focus, zero usability and cluttered with dozens of distracting boxes and links that do not contribute to the site's marketing goal.

A commercial one worth looking is:
http://www.interspire.com/websitepublisher/

I also heard good things about Expressionengine, but never looked at it.
http://expressionengine.com/

Another popular and professional one is Typo3, but I disliked the concept that it has it's own programming language that you'd have to learn.

Ralf

[Dean Holland]

Hi

Again like many have said Wordpress is the CMS for me

I'm not techie at all and in fact I dont know many other CMS's

But I can use wordpress, it has a ton of features and plugins that mean you can pretty much do anythign you want with it

Good luck

Dean

[Paul Teague]

I've used Mambo and Joomla in the past and they've been very good, loads of add-ons, intuitive to use.

I even tried a little-known one called E107 which is actually really good ... it has some really cool add-ons.

However, for CMS I just don't think you can beat a server installed Wordpress ... it's easy to install in cpanel, there's a tonne of support for it and and the add-on support is incredible.

Think of something that you want it to do, and there's bound to be an add-on for it :-)

If you're not good at the teccie stuff Siteground specialize in installing and supporting CMS installations on packages like Joomla, Wordpress, Mambo, Drupal, they provide some great free tutorials and also give decent free templates as well.

[Kunj K]

Wordpress without a doubt!

It's awesome :)

[mjbacch]

I also think WP is the fastest, easiest way to set up a CMS quickly. Plus, there are a ton of plugins that allow you to modify for SEO. I also used a program that allows you to set up a paid membership and drip the content to the new member if you are setting up a paid membership site.

What I like most about WP is the fact that there are so many developers out there contributing new and cool plugins for it, almost on a daily basis.

One last thing I want to mention is the fact that if you set up WP correctly Google loves the linking structure and you can get ranked pretty fast for your long tail keywords. Just remember to change how WP names the pages so you don't end up with a ..../?P=12 Page but a ../long_tail_keyword

[Desmonds]

hey.....
I use Wordpress extensively and learned it well enough in 1 day to put a site up. It fixes every issue of on page SEO with only a small amount of configuration and a few pluggins.

[Saleem Yaqub]

Wordpress is highly customisable, little to no learning curve, vast range of themes, etc. And its FREE! I've used it for lots of sites and works a dream. Yes its not an enterprise level CMS but it all depends what you need.

[Manish Singh]

My vote goes for "Wordpress". I've been using wordpress for a long time and it is by far the best cms. 8)
Another good thing about wordpress is:
You can easily find lots of free plugins and templates related to almost all niches.

[giorgio79]

IMHO Drupal is the best CMS. :)

+1 for Drupal

The White House cant be wrong. :D

[rhonnee1]

Does anyone suggest a high quality membership script for using with Wordpress?

[nitroweb]

I like wordpress because of it's simplicity.
Joomla is extremely customizable but won't rank it high on ease.


@ rhonnee1 : A good membership script for wordpress is Digitalaccesspass.com .