Helping some friends put up a brochure website, I sifted through my blog daddy’s
href=”http://naibledesigns.com/page/nd?anchor=open_source_cms_evaluation_part”
target=”_blank”>Open Source CMS Evaluation and comments in which he picked up Drupal
(with positive reviews about Joomla). I decided to go for Joomla after
installing both. After ignoring some confusing terminology, Joomla’s admin interface is easy and tempting, friends just
picked it up without the need of lengthy training or tutorials. Admin concepts
are easy to grasp, and everything follow a logical trend.
Here comes the but. For the simple brochure-website requirements of small businesses (I’d say 80%
of the market), I think Joomla is overblown (albeit powerful). Drupal might have
the same issue (I haven’t tried it in a real implementation though – only
testing). Small businesses (at least around here) have pretty limited
requirements in terms of putting themselves online. Page CRUD, some images, cross links, simple layout and menues
and that’s almost it. With simplification and the target market in mind, there
could be a market for YA-CMS.
The website is now up (Ayadco: Construction, Engineering, Electromechanical Sercies) with the marketing content fed by my
friends. It is hosted via Network Egypt with a great price tag.
Today, I’ll be attending a session on Drupal administration at href=”http://open-craft.com” target=”_blank”>OpenCraft by Manal Hassan and I’m tempted to explore Drupal further to see how it can be slimmed down and why it is the CMS of choice for many.