An Evaluation of Content Management Systems and the Effect They Are Having on How Websites Are Coded
An evaluation of Content Management Systems and the effect they are having on how websites are coded Daniel Rhys Hardy April 2011 Abstract This report analyzes five popular Php Content management systems with the aim of discovering which is the most efficient in terms of creating and maintaining websites and their content. Content management systems are gaining an ever increasing role regarding website creation, and so discovering the most efficient system is a very important task to undertake. The systems analyzed are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, CMSmadesimple and Silverstripe. Each system is tested in twelve key areas, considered to be of high importance in the web development field. These areas include; installation, graphical user interface, mobile friendliness, accessibility, search engine optimization, security, customization, system extensions, amount of programming knowledge required, performance and speed, W3C guideline compliance, and Support. The data obtained was gained from archives, articles, books, published reports and the author’s own extensive research, making use of readily available online validators and checkers. This report attempts to challenge the idea that the most popular content management systems are the most efficient, and indeed succeeds in proving this point. By combining results from the twelve criteria areas, it was possible to prove that the least popular system, Silverstripe, was actually the most efficient system. This point was slightly contradicted by the performance of the most popular system though, Wordpress, finishing narrowly second in front of CMSMadeSimple. with the second and third most popular systems, Drupal and Joomla, finishing fourth and fifth respectively. About The Author Having recently graduated with first class honors in Web Computing from the University of Wolverhampton, Daniel considers himself well educated in the web development field.
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