Advantages of custom web development over the use of popular CMS (Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, etc)

Sometimes we receive many inquiries from people interested in web development or maintenance of websites developed from CMS prefabricated and widespread use, such as: Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, osCommerce, Prestashop, ... and just we always had to talk about with our customers and stakeholders, so we want to explain the differences, advantages and disadvantages of using these technologies respect to custom web development.

In LA TEVA WEB we are not enemies in the use of these technologies, which are also open source, but to a large extent, the use for our part complicates our work in providing services for many years we have offered our clients successfully. We also have to say that, although most websites we do are designed and programmed as our customer, in some other projects that we rely on osCommerce because we have a high level of experience and self-development based to this platform.

What are the differences between web development and use of CMS or prefabricated platforms?

An open source CMS usually consists in a package already developed it, unpacking it at the web server has a configuration wizard through which you can easily customize a web design and some extra functionality, so that in a few minutes you have a website ready to start entering contents through the ​​management area that this tool provides the user.
A bespoke web development, begins completely from nothing, and depending on the needs of customers, specifying a web design starts with the participation of the client, and then begins to program all the features that have been concreted with the client as will doing the website layout.

Thus explained, it seems more effective to use a prefabricated CMS, since the time taken to have an online page available is much smaller, and therefore, the base cost of the project should be reduced. However, now come some troubles.

Drawbacks regarding the use of pre-installed platforms.

Web Design

The design of the website is a decisive factor to consider to user’s comfortable browsing thought website, which also wants to capture the corporative image that wants to give to website users. Well, web design adapted to the needs of a company is much more hard and expensive using a prefabricated CMS, since to do so, we must shatter a multitude of files for which need a web programmer who has experience in web design, and time spent for this purpose will depend on the degree of him familiarity with that particular platform. However, developing a project from scratch, you start the web layout following the design pattern that has been agreed upon with the customer, thereby creating a much cleaner code, controlled and effective to develop later all the features that the customer needs.

Functionality

In the same way as when you install a CMS usually comes with a standard design, content management system that integrates very complex because it tries to capture the maximum number of options available to suit the web as many possible kinds of web ( shop, blog, crm, newsletter ...) So, functionally is fine, but when managing content is not likely to be used most of these options, or that the site administrator is required to fill unnecessary fields to display the data correctly, thus running the site is usually quite difficult to understand for the customer. On the other hand, if the client needs to manage an element type that is not covered by CMS there are two ways: find a management module for the platform used (as a plugin) consider what the customer needs (it’s usually difficult), or developing a new module which would have involved an advanced programmer, since development on this platform requires a great knowledge within the same.

Develop a content management system tailored to the client, have many advantages for both customer and the programmer. For the customer because it has the capacity to intervene in the way on how him will manage information, and to the programmer, because knows the 100% his own code and it is much easier to develop what the customer asks. The end result is a page where content management is more convenient, fast, robust and efficient for the person who ultimately will take the contents managing.

Security

The CMS developed under free licenses, often look very advanced security measures, but its widespread use and extended, are the target of many hackers to find security holes, and when this happens, these holes are published by the same hackers, making other people without much knowledge to attack the website successfully.

On the contrary, custom programmed website uses an exclusive code to this website, so that a hacker knows that he will get no benefit or merit further in case it gets to take control from a website has been coded and designed with customer needs.