Choosing the right CMS for your community: 4 things you need to do

One of the first things you do to develop your com­mu­nity is choose what CMS you will run it on. This can be very easy, or very hard because there are so many CMS options avail­able to you. There are the big Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tems like Word­Press, Dru­pal, or Joomla. Then there are the lesser known, and some­times even bet­ter CMS’s out there that you’ve prob­a­bly never heard of. Just last night I stum­bled upon a pretty decent CMS called e107. Ever heard of it? I def­i­nitely haven’t.

With all of those types of CMS’s avail­able to you, which ones do you know to pick? The big, famous CMS just because every­one else uses it, or a lesser known CMS that for all you know is bet­ter than the big guys?

1. Get people’s opinions

The opin­ion of pos­si­ble read­ers, mem­bers or sub­scribers mat­ters a lot. You could go to a forum and ask around for great CMS options and see if you get some­thing out of the ordi­nary. While it is almost guar­an­teed that peo­ple will shout out pop­u­lar CMS’s (like Word­Press or Dru­pal), you should take into con­sid­er­a­tion the lesser known options as well.

Read some reviews of the CMS too. Blogs have a ton of reviews, and you will find that not all pop­u­lar CMS’s have great user expe­ri­ences. I know a hand­ful of peo­ple who don’t like Word­Press, but are doing per­fectly fine on a dif­fer­ent CMS.

This can take a while to do, and I know you will be eager to start get­ting every­thing ready. But it does make sense to just sim­ply go around for a lit­tle while and see what peo­ple think. If you already have your mind set on a CMS, then that’s great. But you never know what a cou­ple dif­fer­ent views could do for you.

2. Use some­thing you think you can work with

If you like the fea­tures of Word­Press, but aren’t com­fort­able with the inter­face of the lat­est ver­sion then Word­Press will not work for you. Then there could always be the CMS you’re com­fort­able with but the fea­tures suck.

Just because it works for a lot of peo­ple doesn’t mean it will work for you

Be a leader, not a fol­lower. You can’t expect to just know your way around a CMS and know every thing there is to know about it.

3. Ask your­self some questions

Ask­ing your­self ques­tions about this CMS can make you real­ize that maybe this CMS is not the best option.

Can I eas­ily cus­tomize it?

You should do a back­ground check. If you can find a strong, active com­mu­nity that con­tin­u­ously writes mod­i­fi­ca­tions and themes for that CMS then maybe that will be per­fect for you. You will learn the process of installing and man­ag­ing every­thing, and might even pick up on some cod­ing tricks.

Safety first, is it secure?

Today there are too many hack­ers to name. Why some peo­ple hack into your web­sites, I will never under­stand. But you need to keep your com­mu­nity safe from these peo­ple. You should always look for addons that enhance your secu­rity, go back to the forums and ask how secure the CMS is, see what secu­rity mea­sures are taken in ver­sion release notes. Bet­ter to be safe than sorry, right?

Will I be able to work with it?

Can you get through the admin panel okay? If you have trou­ble nav­i­gat­ing, you may want to con­sider tak­ing out time of the day to go through it and see if you can find your way bet­ter after not­ing where every­thing is. Another option could be to see if you can change the style of your admin panel. I know it can done in Word­Press, but I’m sure there are plenty of avail­able ways to do it in other CMS’s.

Does it have all the fea­tures I want?

Some­times you won’t know it from the very begin­ning, but there are things that will tell you what fea­tures there are.

• Try a demo ver­sion. Paid forum soft­ware like vBul­letin, or Invi­sion Power Board have a demo ver­sion of their lat­est ver­sions. This is a great way for you to get famil­iar with how every­thing works before tak­ing that finan­cial plunge. Other CMS sys­tems are free, and may not have a demo. But it doesn’t hurt for you to down­load and install it and take it for a test drive.
• Again, get reviews. Tons of CMS’s have reviews posted on blogs, forums, and any other kind of web­site. Hope­fully if it’s a good review then it will men­tion the fea­tures of the CMS.

Can I host this?

If you plan on self host­ing you com­mu­nity, then you need to have all the qual­i­fi­ca­tions for host­ing it met. All CMS’s should have a list of require­ments your host needs to meet. You can get an amaz­ing host for as lit­tle as $5 a month.

If you can’t pay, or just don’t want to self host your CMS then don’t worry about a thing. There are plenty of places where you can sign up for a free blog of forum.

If you want a blog on a free hosted ser­vice, I rec­om­mend the following:

• WordPress.com
• Blog­ger
• Tum­blr

If you want a forum on a free hosted ser­vice, I rec­om­mend the following:

• ZetaBoards
• Foru­mo­tion

4. Com­pare

Some soft­ware shares very com­mon fea­tures with other soft­ware. But there is always some­thing that makes a huge dif­fer­ence, and makes one stand out from the other.

A great way to com­pare dif­fer­ent kinds of forum soft­ware is to use a tool called Forum­Ma­trix. What that does, is you check what forum soft­ware you want to be com­pared and it will do a side by side com­par­i­son of it. It has just about every major forum plat­form, as well as some you may have never heard of.

Get­ting fur­ther advice

There are places on the Inter­net where you can get more advice on a com­mu­nity that is specif­i­cally related to blog­ging and forums.

For all forum related discussions:

• The Admin Zone. It’s the largest resource for forum admin­is­tra­tors. You can dis­cuss pretty much any forum soft­ware and get tips and tricks to do just about any­thing on your forum.
• Admin­Fu­sion. Sim­i­lar to TheAd­min­Zone, just smaller.
• Dig­i­tal­Point Forum Man­age­ment. Dig­i­tal­Point has a lot of great dis­cus­sions, and it has a pretty decent Forum Man­age­ment section.

For all blog related discussions:

• Blog­geries. An amaz­ing blog­ger resource. It has a forum, link direc­tory, and the best part about it is it has a great community.
• Blog­ger Forum. One of the most active blog­ger forums out there.
• Blog Traf­fic School Forums. A great forum from the same guy who runs the amaz­ing Blog Mas­ter­mind program.
• Dig­i­tal­Point Blog­ging Forum. A place I visit every day. Has some decent discussions.

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