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Choosing your Content Management System (CMS): open-source or owned solution?

Choosing your content management system (CMS): open-source or owned solution? - Parkour3
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Benjamin Loiselle
Benjamin Loiselle
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Croissance Web Website development

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Here's step 6 in designing a website for an agency: The choice of an open-source or proprietary solution depends above all on your challenges and expectations.

At Parkour3, we've been evaluating CMS on the market since 2002, and year after year, Wordpress remains our preferred choice. Of course, we adapt to our customers' business contexts and needs, which occasionally requires us to work on other platforms. Generally speaking, Wordpress remains the CMS of choice for over 70% of our projects. The choice of content manager should raise several questions at the time of evaluation. The 6 main factors we pay attention to are:
  • Programming language
  • User autonomy
  • Performance
  • Security
  • Developer community
  • The marketplace

The programming language

The choice of CMS is closely linked to the programming language you are prepared to use for your project. We tackle the following questions:
  1. Is it an old technology that no longer seems to be supported on other platforms in our digital ecosystem, or is it a new technology known to our development team?
  2. Is it a technology we plan to keep for a long time?
At Parkour3, for example, we'll be asking whether it's in PHP, HTML and CSS.

Content manager user autonomy

The autonomy of CMS users after the site has been put online is essential. Creating menu items, managing content and creating pages are tasks regularly performed by website managers. It's not uncommon for demo versions to be created and functionality tests to be carried out to ensure that the content manager is easy to use.

Overall CMS performance

The performance of the CMS download and management interface is obviously a must. We recommend testing with demo content to evaluate:
  1. download speed
  2. Quantity and relevance of scripts downloaded
  3. Speed of use of the interface
  4. Lightweight operation for browsers
Once these basic tests have been successfully completed, it's time to look at the performance of CMS module development. For example, if the CMS is in Laravel, does it have to be developed according to Laravel standards, or can the approach be customized? In the case of a proprietary CMS, it will be more complicated to maintain, both for the customer and for us. You have to take into account the amount of data to be managed. If, for example, you have 100,000 entries and your CMS operates a single database, content management may suffer. Why Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal? Each has its strengths. It's a question of community size and innovation. For example, Wordpress is coming up with their Gutenberg feature, where development will be done in blocks instead of in page templates.

The level of security

You need to secure your website according to the type of information you collect. The more sensitive the information you collect, the more you'll need to consider the issue and draw up a plan to secure your site. The CMS you choose will have to comply with certain programming standards. Even though there's a community that's keenly aware of CMS security, it's important to know whether security updates follow the CMS publisher's standards, and whether updates have undergone one or more rounds of validation.

Community size

The size of the developer community will have an indirect impact on development costs and time, once the right modules, tools and technology have been chosen. Community support plays a role when challenges arise. Developers will reflexively seek support from other developers in the community in popular forums such as Stackoverflow, in the resource sections of the associated language's website or even on the technology's Slack channel. Of course, rapid support is a must. That's why the size of the community has a direct bearing on how quickly questions are answered and challenges resolved.

The number of modules available in the marketplace

Every CMS has its basic modules and fields available. Your project will undoubtedly require customization to suit your needs and business processes. When looking for the right CMS, we'll pay particular attention to which modules are relevant to your needs. Some of your needs may not be met outright when the CMS is installed. That's when it's time to weigh up the pros and cons: are you prepared to develop the modules in order to keep the CMS in question, or simply consider another CMS with these features available from the outset? The cost of developing the module or migrating to another CMS will often be decisive. For reasons of website performance, it may be wise to take the time to develop the module so as not to use too many plug-ins. At the same time, you'll avoid developing a dependency on updates.

Selecting a CMS for an e-commerce project

As previously mentioned, you need to identify high-level functionalities and then assess whether the platform can provide the required functionality, whether through existing modules or those to be developed. You will undoubtedly be sensitive to the costs associated with the technologies evaluated. Some platforms can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually. It's important to put your financial projections into perspective.
Module availability
When building an e-commerce site, your needs in terms of business processes must be precise. The chosen platform will become an important digital tool. It can be connected to your Product Information Management (PIM) software. It is likely that the platform will need to connect to other environments such as delivery services, CRM, Etailers, online support platform, proprietary applications, etc. If some of these modules are developed, reliable and available for purchase, it may make sense to buy them. You'll save time and considerable development costs. It's important to find out whether these modules are developed or supported by the CMS publisher, or come from third parties. Some CMS publishers will not support or validate the quality of modules, so you need to be vigilant in your selection. For example, in the case of Wordpress/Woocommerce, many of the modules available in the marketplace are verified by Woocommerce and may even be endorsed in terms of functionality.
Proof of concept
In the event that you draw your inspiration from another e-business, whether in your own industry or in an industry that operates under a similar business model, you should try to learn more about their missteps, the limitations they had to encounter and the total costs of acquiring the platform. Look for a conclusive proof of concept. In a static website, management is pretty straightforward, but when the platform has to manage multiple databases, accounts and transactions, you need to be extra vigilant. After all, investing in e-commerce is a major change for many companies.
Payment module selection
In the event that you wish to use mature, fully-developed platforms such as PayPal or Stripe, integration with your e-commerce will be fairly straightforward and without too many integration challenges. If the project is moving towards a solution such as Beanstream or Paysafe, the primary reason will have to be the need for greater customization. The long-term savings will have to justify the higher short-term investment compared with the first two solutions mentioned.
Your sales model
If your project involves selling unique products, without too many variations, and your database contains a few thousand entries, the vast majority of platforms will be able to meet your requirements. However, here is a non-exhaustive list of questions you should answer before making a platform selection.
  1. Do you need to manage tens of thousands of unique or variable products?
  2. Do you need to support subscription management?
  3. Will you need to manage a tendering portal?
  4. Are you managing distributors or multi-user corporate accounts?
  5. Will your e-commerce be accessible internationally?
  6. Will you be subject to taxes in the countries where you distribute?
Maintenance
To ensure your operational performance, you'll need to ensure that documentation is available at the end of the project. This will need to evolve in line with the changes you make over time. As a minimum, it should include the following sections:
  1. Installed modules and their mode of operation, as well as connections to other modules.
  2. The initial versions of each of the technologies used in the creation of your e-commerce site, as well as up-to-date versions.

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