Kendo - 12:49 am on Jul 12, 2012 (gmt 0)

Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla are fantastic website apps. Each has hundreds of add-ons and professionally looking theme designs to cater for almost any type of web site. And you don't even need to know what html or ftp is to create websites that look like they were designed by an ad agency with a huge budget.

These content management systems (CMS) are very similar, and I am currently working with all 3 to set up some demo sites. One was easier to install, another easier to configure, and another I expect will be better overall for creation of static content.

My report about all 3 is plus, plus plus. How popular they will be with inexperienced designers will come down to the help and user-guides available and they all provide extensive help and user forums with lots of supporters eager to help. A user only needs to be able to find their way around, read and absorb.

For professional web designers, ie: those fluent in html, scripting and/or server side languages, these apps can make throwing together sophisticated looking web sites a quick and easy chore.

But where I am having a problem with them is that they do not allow much room for customisation. For example if I didn't want to use the Flash players that are available or if I wanted to add extra code to a page then it becomes a problem without creating a new plugin. Sure I can add the html to the page but that's only good for one page and it doesn't cater for delivering a choice of videos on the fly. Likewise if I need to add some extra code like a CSS or JavaScript between the head tags then those parts are applied to ALL pages.

To be able to inject code conditionally would solve my problem, but then I have to edit the templates to add those functions. A less experienced programmer will never find where to add the code and a newbie would have no hope.

I many respects it's like the difference between using spark plugs and transistorised ignition.