Which Content Management System Is Best?

When considering which content management system (CMS) is right for your dental website, you’ll likely receive recommendations for the most popular names in CMS – Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Concrete5, and others. Many people will recommend these systems for any website need under the sun, but each system has both pros and cons. It’s our opinion that the best system available depends on your needs.

It’s best to do your research before blindly picking one of the CMSs out of a hat or pure recommendation. Let take a look at each system to help you better understand the CMS website world.

What To Should Know About CMS

Wordpress – The most important thing to keep in mind about Wordpress is that it was created as a blogging platform. Blogging is important when marketing your practice, but your dental website will obviously need quite a bit more than blogs. Today, WordPress is still the best blogging platform available. However, to convert this CMS into a working website with menus, pages, SEO frame work, website security, and other web features you need at least 5-7 plugins. A plugin is another piece of code that works in conjunction with a CMS. Wordpress is notorious for being dependent on plugins. Many quality plugins have additional costs. These plugins can be difficult to use and will require frequent updating for security and new technology. WordPress is the most popular system available on the market. This is due to Google’s main SEO representative, Matt Cutts, who was impressed with WordPress’s blogging features. As a main website celebrity, Matt Cutts’ endorsement exploded WordPress. Marketers and others saw an opportunity to up-sell WordPress due to Matt Cutts’ impressions. However, at no time has Google favored WordPress, or any other system over another. Also, due to its popularity, WordPress has become the target of spam, hacking, and viruses. If WordPress is the CMS you wish to utilize, we highly recommend an additional security software. Pro Dental Designs may help to secure your website – click here. Many dental websites are built using WordPress. A very good CMS, but considerations above need to be examined.

Joomla – Joomla has the same plugin problems as Wordpress. In addition, Joomla websites are also frequently attacked by hackers, which is a concern when building a website for your business. You may wonder why attacks are a big issue if your website contains simple dental information not worth anything more than “information”. When a virus or hacker has had enough time to destroy and manipulate your website for their purposes, Google and other search engines will ban your website from a Google search. This will have a profound impact on all your online marketing efforts. Joomla is also a bit more difficult than Wordpress, making it frustrating to use, especially for those with little or no experience with CMSs. On the other hand, Joomla has more capabilities than WordPress. However, considering the set-backs, Joomla may not be the best choice for a dental website.

Drupal – Drupal is extremely versatile, and can be used to build almost any kind of website. This kind of content management framework works well for larger and more complicated websites. Unfortunately, Drupal is a very difficult CMS to use, causing most users to become easily overwhelmed. Drupal may also cost more to install depending on who you are utilizing for installation.

Concrete5 – Concrete5 is a mix between Drupal and WordPress. Concrete5 is extremely versatile and continues to maintain sequence with new technology. The entire platform was re-designed in 2016 to keep up with the newest innovations. Due to the newest updated and conversion, many users became discouraged since updates to older systems could not be made. This also became very discouraging for plugin developers. Concrete5 is designed to build websites. It also utilized and advanced in-line editing interface making the system very simple to use for beginners. Although plugins are available to increase the versatility of the CMS, Concrete5 does not require plugins to function as a normal, secure website. Concrete5 comes with security, SEO frame work, menus, page building framework, etc. This is a terrific CMS to utilize for any simple or complex dental website.

After our study, put simply, there is no one CMS that is the best. Each CMS out there has pros and cons, depending on what you’re using them for. Like deciding between a truck and ECO-car, your decisions are based on need. If you wish to avoid more issues with security or cost of employing beefier security, WordPress and Joomla may not be your choice. On the other hand, if your building a simple static dental website, WordPress and Joomla are fine. For more advanced and versatile dental websites Concrete5 and Drupal work amazing.

For help setting up your dental website or for tips on how to keep your dental practice running smoothly, please call CTC National. We want to help you learn how to make your website work for you.