Get your company’s website up and running! Part 2 - Powering the website.

Last time, I discussed getting the infrastructure in place to run your website - what physical hardware to use. This time, Im going to discuss what to use to power your website.

You may not be aware, but the technology choice you made in the previous article - The host impacts the options you have for running your website. The one option you will probably lose with shared hosting is Radiant, my recommended content management system.

Radiant

“Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams”. Radiant Admin InterfaceIt runs on Ruby on Rails, uses a simple, intuitive Parent - Child system to manage relationships. It enables you to have a high amount of flexibility when designing a site, but gives you very few handouts. It is a huge leap above coding in speed, but slower than something like joomla for how many features you can cram into a site. For a look at a Radiant site I put together, take a look at Method Seven

Pros

  • Easy to administer
  • Ultimate in flexibility
  • Great community

Cons

  • More technical set up
  • Small user base
  • No WYSIWYG


Joomla

Joomla Admin InterfaceI found Joomla when looking for a good CMS for my previous company. We wanted a CMS with a public area and private area for our customers. Joomla was chock full of features - it seemed to do everything under the sun and I decided to give it a shot. Joomla does a lot, but the big problem is how confusing it is. Im not sure what the idea was when the software was designed, but it is absolute madness trying to administer. It is possible to present a coherent customer-facing site and as an example of one that I did, take a look at New England Tanker Chartering, Inc. The site was done based on a template from Joomla Shack. If you want someone else to do the brunt of the work, Water and Stone are heavily involved in Joomla and do some nice work.

Pros

  • Full of features
  • Large community
  • Wysiwyg editor

Cons

  • Very difficult to modify
  • URLs are ugly as sin
  • High learning curve


Rapidweaver

Rapidweaver Edit ScreenLast but not least, an easy solution to your company website design. Rapidweaver, from “Realmac Software” is a almost a wysiwyg editor for websites. It is Mac only, but PC users may want to check out this thread on the Realmac site where windows alternatives are discussed. The power in rapidweaver is the built in templates for blogs, contact forms, file sharing, movie albums, photo albums, quicktime, and of course normal text. The themes that are built in are pretty snazzy too. For examples of sites I have used Rapidweaver for, check out Windows Xp on the Intel Mac and Tasis Class of 2000.

Pros

  • Really quick and easy
  • Sites look great
  • Wysiwyg editor

Cons

  • Limited uses
  • Urls can get ugly
  • Costs you $40


Conclusion

These are some options for your company website that I would stand behind. Depending on your goals, I would go with either Radiant or Rapidweaver, but there are certain instances where Joomla would be the best choice. What is your situation? I’ll try and help!

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