CMS or Framework :: TYPO3 CMS & SEO
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CMS or Framework, what is right for me?

A customer should always ask this question to himself and decide

Today, there is a plethora of cms an framework technologies available in market. We hear the praise of many such system very often. Someone is saying xyz is excellent, others saying the opposite! So, many vouches for, while so many going against! So many pros and so many cons....YOU are not a technical person and you are confused! You want to create and launch your website and you want to select wisely.

Many customers had to pass through the above situation. They were few lucky, if they encountered a good technical assistance who had helped them to decide wisely. But many were unlucky due to lack of a proper guidance. Here we attempt to highlight few pointers that you should evaluate properly before choosing your software. A small effort now can save a lot and gain you the extra miles! Here we brought in front of you a complete overview on CMS (content management system) and Framework systems. What features CMS offer and what frameworks, which are the common features and more important what is the right system for you. The following information will help you decide properly. We even tried a basic idea what the popular CMS systems offer. So, please read and select correctly.

Selecting a software is exactly like choosing a car. There is no good car or bad car, every car has a value to its customer. There can be premium cars or normal cars, but ultimately they all drive you to your destination. Yes, there are many other factors like product cost, service network, after sales support, spare parts availability, spare part costs, fuel efficiency and the list goes on, which a customer evaluates before he decides to purchase a car. The same rule of thumb applies for web platform software! If not exactly same, but the principle remains almost same. There is no good or bad software, if it had survived 4-5 years in this extremely competitive software market.

We will discuss some points that will help you make a good decision. While discussing we might include some points at high level, but that does not mean that particular point is valid for all software that falls in the category! We might say that "FREE piece of code developed by average developer available" for CMS, but this does not mean that every FREE extensions of CMS are developed by average programmers! 

What I need?

The following are the high level pointers, you need to decide.

  • Do I need a website that has more than 10 pages?
  • Do I regularly update my website contents?
  • Do I need to add pages sometime, if not often?
  • Do I need lot of features with minimal cost and effort?
  • Will I manage the website on my own, even though I am not a technical person?
  • Do I have separate groups and users to manage my website?
  • Is my website has direct impact on my business?
  • Can I allocate a good budget to my project?
  • Will I allow any average developer's code on my website?
  • Is rendering in browser is all that matters?
  • Does it matters if some unwanted and unused unit present in my website code?
  • Am I ready to switch over to dedicated root or virtual private sever?
  • How much value do I put for my website?

You need a CMS when:

  • You need more than 10 pages in your website
  • You regularly updates content on your web pages
  • You want to manage the website on your own
  • You have small or average budget for your website
  • You are not a technical person
  • Output in browser is all that matters for you
  • You still want to continue using shared hosting for your website
  • You want readily available free extensions in your website for various need
  • You do not have technical team to support your website
  • You do not mind keeping some unused stuff on your website code
  • You want to put your website in no time

You need a framework when:

  • You need a very precise software
  • Budget is not the deciding factor
  • You will hire or contract separate technical team for your website
  • You can afford to host on dedicated or virtual private server
  • You want high control over your website software
  • You need quality assurance mechanism before you allow any code on your software
  • Every piece of software must be highly optimized
  • No unnecessary and unused piece of code
  • You have trained personnels managing your software
  • Capacity to support huge volume of traffic (10000+ visitors per day)
  • You can spent USD 80/- and above per month for your servers

TYPO3 CMS

Enterprise CMS, you can develop anything with it! Right now, it is still the most robust, feature rich OpenSource PHP based CMS backed by excellent technical community. TYPO3 has a long history and has always kept itself technically advanced, updated and flexible in compare to others.

You should TYPO3 CMS for the following:

  1. You have many pages on your website
  2. You create pages and update page content regularly
  3. You have multiple domains for your website
  4. You have several website and want to manage them from same TYPO3 installation
  5. You need workspace and version control support inside CMS
  6. You need some regular features like Rich Text Editors, User login out of the box
  7. You need multi-lingual support in your website
  8. You need readily available FREE extensions for your website
  9. You can afford to rent at least a VPS for optimized performance
  10. You have many back-end groups and users to manage separate sections of your website(s)
  11. You need a good platform that allows custom development quickly
  12. Quality software runs in your website platform
  13. You will use specialist or quality developers to work on your software
  14. You have a budget for your website

Neos (formerly TYPO3 Neos)

Neos is a relatively new CMS platform based on FLOW framework. Earlier Neos was maintained by TYPO3 Association and was called TYPO3 Neos. In 2015, they decided to split and the teams become separate. TYPO3 Association will continue to focus on developing TYPO3 CMS. While the new team will manage FLOW and Neos. The primary drawback is, it is very young. The team behind is highly skilled, but the software itself is new.

You may choose Neos, if:

  1. You need a system to manage website content on regular basis
  2. You need a lean system and decide what you need to install and customize
  3. You need a very good software architecture
  4. You need features like composer to control your software version
  5. You need quality control over your software
  6. You need quality developers for your software
  7. You do not have many back-end groups and users
  8. You are open to hire or contract developer to develop custom extension
  9. You have a moderate budget

Drupal

Another good CMS available for many years. But it still lacks behind in feature that TYPO3 offers out of the box. For e.g. Rich Text Editor is available in TYPO3 by default, but you need to install this extension separately in Drupal. Again features like mobile friendly backend interface is available, which in unavailable in TYPO3.

You choose Drupal, if:

  1. You need option to create and update page contents regulary
  2. You want to hire or contract technical support for your website
  3. You need many FREE extensions available in your website
  4. You want to edit content from mobile devices
  5. You are willing to pay a fee for premium modules
  6. You want some ready to use theme for your website
  7. You are willing to rent dedicated or virtual private server
  8. You do not have many back-end groups and users to manage your website

WordPress

It is the most popular CMS right now. It has a user base 10 times than Drupal and 15 times of TYPO3. But popular does not mean that it is the best CMS software. It is like comparing Opel with Jaquar!

You will choose WordPress, if:

  1. You need a very easy backend panel
  2. You do not want to hire separate technical support for your website
  3. You have very limited budget for your website
  4. You will use shared hosting
  5. You need a 1-click install option
  6. You need tons of ready-made theme available for FREE
  7. Your only concern is how your website looks in browser
  8. You do not mind a novice developer works on your website software
  9. You do not mind html, php and javascript code all resides at same script
  10. You will manage your own website
  11. You do not need to run multiple websites from same panel ever
  12. You want to experiment developing your own WP plugin in future!

Our opinion

We are in web development since 2001. We have worked on several frameworks and CMS. If you need a CMS, then we will always suggest TYPO3 for the following reasons:

  1. Proven, Tested and adapted by many top corporates
  2. It is the only enterprise level free OpenSource CMS
  3. Provide inbuilt option like caching, content compression, scheduler, configuration check
  4. Provides endless option for customization and future development
  5. Provides the best security among all other CMS
  6. Provides features like multi-domain, multiple websites, multiple languages, RTE, User management out of the box
  7. Updating TYPO3 version does not mean updating all extensions, unless it is major update where compatibility needs to be checked
  8. Active community always keep TYPO3 updated. TYPO3 supported PHP namespace support in 2012 itself!
  9. Total control over your website content and back-end access.
  10. Provides concept of workspace, review cycle (add/review/publish) for contents out of the box
  11. Complete flexibility when your website needs to grow, you never know when you need your 2nd website!
  12. Ability to build a feature rich website in no time
  13. Overall lower cost when you compare the quality and capability available in longer run
  14.  Last but not the least, we are available to support your TYPO3 need :)

We are not readily suggesting any framework like CMS software. Because when you decide to use framework, a lower level of investigation is necessary to chose the right framework depending on the need. There are many lightweight framework that can offer many small and medium scale needs. CodeIgniter, Phalcon, PHPFuel, CakePHP, Flow falls in this category. There are other large frameworks that are needed for large scale need and they are quite heavy compared to their lightweight friends. Laravel, Zend Framework, Symfony are few in this category. Comparing CodeIgniter with Laravel is not same as comparing WP with TYPO3.