For quite a while I've been developing and using my own custom content management system (CMS), SiteManagr, to power the websites I've built. I began building it several years ago before I ever heard the term CMS. It started out as a single PHP script using SQLite to store data, which quickly became messy and inefficient. I then broke it up into several scripts and moved to MySQL, and most recently redeveloped it using the CodeIgniter framework. It's finally to the point where it has become a very capable CMS with all the usual features (blog posts, pages, user management - visit the project page) and is currently powering this entire site and a few others. This has been a great achievement for me, to use software that I've built from the ground up. But more recently I've been having mixed feelings about that.

Reinventing the Wheel

Much of my time in the past year has been spent adding features and making changes to SiteManagr, when it dawned on me: there are lots of great, free, open source CMS solutions already out there! Why spend my time 'reinventing the wheel' when I could be using the wheel? And this wheel, err CMS, has been tested to ensure there are no bugs, and is used by thousands. Also, many CMS solutions allow developers to write plug-ins to add functionality, and these plug-ins are freely available. So, instead of focusing my time on adding functionality that has already been implemented in other CMS solutions, why not embrace this, and use an existing CMS?

Enter Wordpress

So if I'm going to use a CMS, which to use? My basic requirements were it must be built on PHP and use MySQL for data storage. The admin interface must be clean and simple. So I downloaded and installed Joomla. It met all my requirements, but it seemed to have a lot of features, which were somewhat confusing as a new user. I then looked at Drupal, played around with the demo admin interface, and was not impressed. The design was very bare-bones and wasn't what I was looking for. Then I read that Wordpress can be used as a CMS, and thought I'd give Wordpress a try. After downloading, installing and reading through some of the quick tips in the documentation I decided I would try to convert this site over to Wordpress. I posted some content, and created a simple theme that resembles the current site and within a day it was up and running with Wordpress.

The Verdict

To Wordpress or not to Wordpress ... that is the question. Do stop developing SiteManagr and embrace Wordpress? Or ignore the features and development community surrounding Wordpress and keep coding away at SiteManagr? For now I I'm going to do both: continue with the SiteManagr CMS where needed, but also continue to learn about Wordpress and what it's capable of. There will always be cases in which a custom CMS is required, but for the solutions that do not require a custom CMS it's to my advantage as well as my clients advantage to use an existing CMS. I'll gain all the functionality implemented by Wordpress and save myself and my clients time by not having to develop those features myself. My clients will have a rock solid platform to edit and publish their content with all the flexibility and extensibility they need.

Have you embraced a CMS, or developed your own CMS? Have any tips, tricks or suggestions? Post it in the comments!

Further Reading

Here's some of the resources I used while learning Wordpress and developing my own custom theme.

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
  A wealth of information ranging from how to install to the database schema and a great place to start.
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/wordpress
  Lots of great tutorials and free themes.
• http://www.wprecipes.com
  Excellent tips, tricks and code snippets.