Content Management Systems (CMS) for SEO
So you have decided to facilitate content creation?
But which content management system to use? The options available from open source and free software is vast. With today’s websites moving over to CMS so that client’s can control the publishing and flow of their information resources and implement accessibility at the same time, which CMS system should we in the SEO community promote?
The system should offer adequate site structure and unique titles with the clear URL generation and valid HTML, how about ALT text for images too?
Are the commercial CMS products out there better than the freebies?
Dan Horton SEO
Chris 1559 days ago
http://www.cheaplaptopparts.co.ukWordPress?
Adam Taylor 1559 days ago
Adam TaylorSeconded ^^
viaa 1559 days ago
goomla.com, with some minor SEO changes made myself.
Dennis 1559 days ago
http://www.wereld-recepten.nlYeah so far WordPress is the best CMS system I have used.
But the only one I tried before WP is Mambo, wich was a little bit over complicated for me.
Keith 1559 days ago
http://www.welovekaribyron.comvignette
John Cronin 1559 days ago
http://www.upthejunction.comHello,
Well I’m kinda hoping that wordpress is the way forward!
Thomas 1559 days ago
I experienced good results with redaxo. I don’t know if there is an english website available, though.
http://www.redaxo.de/
For blogs I still use wordpress, but for “sites” redaxo was way better suited. (media manager for example, organization of static content)
Dan Horton 1559 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukWhere’s all the Joomla! Post Nuke fans?
Damian Finlay 1559 days ago
http://www.epiar.comHey Dan,
We’ve used Mambo & Joomla and found them to be pretty decent. One client is interested in Serena, and we’re looking into it for them now as well.
Peter 1559 days ago
I was partial to modxcms.com for quite some time, but ran into problems with hosting requirements and decided to go with WordPress + the development speed of modxcms is not quite up to par with the thousands of WP-developers out there.
kid mercury 1559 days ago
http://www.kidmercuryblog.comdepends on what objectives of the site are, although i do believe the powers of vbulletin are vastly underestimated (it’s more than just a message board).
stu 1559 days ago
http://www.webmasterwords.comTYPO3 gets my vote, i’ve used many others. WordPress out the box is actually pretty bad at seo.
Jeremy Luebke 1559 days ago
Check out ModXCMS.com
Add in the SEO Strict URLs plugin and it has zero duplicate url/content issues out of the box.
Stefan de Jong 1559 days ago
Modxcms is also my cms of choice.
Brian Harris 1559 days ago
http://www.digitalclimbing.comDrupal! it’s the best out there, and offers tons of features through 3rd party modules that makes it very easy to deploy an seo minded site.
Adam Moro 1559 days ago
http://www.adammoro.com/Anyone ever tried Ektron? It’s not open source nor is it cheap but it’s powerful and extensive in terms of content management. In terms of SEO, it can be optimized programmatically (i.e. dynamic titles, alt attributes, etc.). I know it’s used for a lot of large scale jobs so for simple sites it may be too much.
I also love WordPress. Works like a charm and no worries about all that licensing garbage. WordPress CAN be optimized with a little work. Most WP platform users know the pitfalls but there are pre-”SEO’d” themes available foir those who don’t. Most of the time, my vote is for WP.
If anyone is interested, I’ve setup a demo for most of the CMSs available in Fantastico: h**p://adammoro.net/labs/cms-demos/
Shane 1558 days ago
ModX is my choice, highly recommended. Not many mods but very easy to develop whatever you need. SEO out of the box.
Ross Johnson 1558 days ago
http://www.3point7designs.com/blogTextpattern works great, a little more “site” related than wordpress which is more blog focused.
SeoGolfer 1558 days ago
Anyone have any luck using Microsoft Sharepoint as a CMS with SEO?
SEO Blog 1558 days ago
http://www.seonews.itDefinitely WordPress. I used also drupal but wordpress is really simple and you can do almost all you want with it. HTH.
g1smd 1558 days ago
ALL of the free and ALL of the commercial CMS products out there suffer some appalling Duplicate Content issues.
The first one to actually get it right would find that sites using it would have an instant advantage over everyone else. Someone step forward and make it happen!
As for using Joomla; I’ve seen the results of a bad implementation of that. It ain’t pretty.
Wordpress, with a lot of work, is manageable, but still not absolutely ideal.
ThePost 1558 days ago
ModX
Drupal is a nightmare for anything below the 1st-level directory in terms of URLs. Duplicate content issues all over the place, plus, there is a flaw with its URL-building that allows anyone to construct – theoretically – as many URL variations as they like, to point to the same page.
Drupal, however, is (or could be) a wicked system but it’s become an unwieldly monster trying to gallop ahead at too fast a pace… I’m gonna stop now ‘cos this could turn into a long one
Hobo 1558 days ago
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/I use wordpress first for seo clients, and Joomla for larger sites where content management is the priority rather than the promotion of it.
To get the most out of Joomla though, YOU NEED FULL ACCESS TO YOUR .HTACCESS FILE for mod rewrite etc.
Both I find are very good for SEO purposes, if you’ve a clue what your doing.
I’ve used Drupal and got decent results too.
Some comments here about dup content issues, yeah, got whalloped with some dup issues with all of the CMS at one time or another.
If you know your way round a robots.txt problems seem to diminish.
Fireblade 1558 days ago
I was always a fan of custom software, I had wordpress setup in a directory on one domain and I could never get the content pages from wordpress to rank as well as the custom pages. I almost gave up on wordpress as a bad joke. After I made some template changes and did some SEO work to my wordpress test mules things got much better. I’ve sworn off custom software, it’s far too expensive and developers are more often than not unreliable. I’m running some trials now with the various CMS / O/S stuff to see what else is good!
Pete W 1558 days ago
http://www.thecommonsensemarketer.comI’d chime in and go for WP too, but I’m currently extending it to make my own atm, which will then get my vote.
Mike 1558 days ago
http://www.searchcorp.bizHi from Sydney
Love WordPress for Blogs or small Business Sites. You need to add the SEO plug ins and play with the URL %formats% to get the best bang for buck.
For more serious CMS applications Joomla with ArtioSEF plug in, plus you need to hack the front page and content pages to make their headings actually H1, H2, etc and just because you did this on the core, doesnt mean any plugins you used will do it as well.
This is a pain but doable, though the major site I did http://www.dynamicbusiness.com still has some issues with lack of H1, h2 headings.
Nothing I have found does a good job of meta tags on Joomla. Also dont make your site title too long, it will push out the title of the content pages as well.
However if you are used to wordpress, Joomla will do your head in.
Mike
Aikido man 1558 days ago
http://www.yoshinkan-aikido-ishinkan.orgHi,
I tried a little Typo3 but it was long time ago so I won’t comment on that but I do use WP frequently due to its simlpicity as most of us. I like very much Drupal (still don’t know why) by the number of queries to the db is enormous when the traffic is heavy. I’m gonna test Joomla soon and will also try MODxCMS as many of you recommend. But I think that always the best solution is … your own written CMS.
Best Regards
g1smd 1558 days ago
*** Joomla will do your head in. ***
Amen, Brother.
Local SEO Guide 1557 days ago
http://www.localseoguide.comHey guys,
Great (and mediocre) minds think alike. I just put up a post on my blog re SEO Friendly CMS requirements. Here’s an excerpt:
Allows the user to create category names for search engine consumption that can show up in the URL, Title Tag, Meta Descrition Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Alt Attribute, Anchor Text, Title Attribute, etc. Examples of categories could be sections, dates, authors, etc. An example of a date category could be “November/2007”.The naming conventions need to have a consistent logical structure. For example if you have /deliverables/seo/reporting/ then you shouldn’t also have /deliverables/reporting/seo/ or /deliverables/seo/client/reporting/.
g1smd 1557 days ago
*** SEO Friendly CMS requirements ***
The biggest requirement is eradication of Duplicate Content issues: eliminating multiple URL paths that can access the exact same content. None of the CMS systems out there properly address that issue “right out the box”.
*** An example of a date category could be “November/2007”. The naming conventions need to have a consistent logical structure. ***
If you are using dates, then there are many obvious advantages to using Year/Month/Day ordering, with a full four-digit year and two digits for each of the month and the day.
This Big-Endian ordering naturally sorts into correct order on both a numerical and alphabetical sort. RFC 3339 also applies.
Chris 1557 days ago
I think you get what you pay for, I have found what I think is a good programmer now and he can do everything I want. My new admin area is great loads of info in there.
iBrian 1557 days ago
http://www.ibrian.co.uk/WordPress is my personal choice – simple enough to manage, inbuilt RSS and ping, and flexible enough to modify with what you need. Use it for pretty much everything these days.
ChrisHill 1557 days ago
ChrisHillI can’t comment on their value in terms of SEO, but pretty much every CMS mentioned above is a pig to work with, they’re bloated, complex and there are so many constraints and limitations in each system its rare I’ve used one and not had to compromise the site in some way or other. If you want a proper CMS with SEO capabilities and don’t want to compromise in any way, go bespoke – then train then end user in the basics of SEO so they don’t mess up your hard work.
QueenBeeCassi 1557 days ago
http://www.queenbeemarketing.comI also wanted to add my vote for ModX. It’s also incredibly easy to design templates for it, and it keeps the code much cleaner than other CMS systems I’ve tried.
Adam Moro 1556 days ago
http://www.adammoro.com/I forgot to mention sNews from h**p://www.solucija.com/home/snews/. Extremely lightweight and easy to customize.
Che Carsner 1556 days ago
http://www.pyrokinesis.comHey all…
Drupal has a great taxonomy module. I would stay away from Joomla. About once a week or more a major security vulnerability shows up with Joomla.
C
Mesca 1556 days ago
http://co2.comDefinitely Drupal. Very good CMS, and very SEO friendly with a few supplemental modules. It’s very good when it comes to heavy traffic, offers multi-site installation out of the box (a lot better than WP-MU). The code is clean and well documented, and well structured. It’s very flexible, allowing you to do nearly anything you want. I love the ability to create custom installs, which really speed up the process when it’s about website mass-creation.
Balitech 1556 days ago
http://www.casinofocus.netDefinitly i wouldnt change any html template to CMS , unless you are php developer or asp it is very hard to make major changes in website structure with big costs. or not to mention all the static adresses which may not be avilable with the new cms,
Ramon Eijkemans 1556 days ago
http://www.monlog.nl/Anyone here got (good/bad?) experiences with cmsmadesimple regarding seo? -> http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/
yaph 1556 days ago
http://www.seo-expert-blog.comI go for Drupal which makes it very easy to create a well optimized site. But no CMS will take the burden away from you to create good content.
Fastrealestate 1556 days ago
http://www.fastrealestate.netI’ve started looking at CMS made simple but have not taken it any further than that. I think it looks good on the surface but I can’t see any reason to move away from wordpress to be honest. Interesting comments about Drupal, I’ve been testing wordpress MU with good results so far. It was a long way from being easy to setup because it’s designed to run in the root, once it’s running it’s as easy to manage multiple blog installs. So far.
Keresőre optimalizált CMS | Keresőoptimalizálás blog - Longhand 1556 days ago
[...] Dave Nailor tette fel az olvasóinak a kérdést, hogy milyen keresőbarát, keresőoptimalizálás szempontjából jónak tekinthető CMS-eket ismernek. Gondoltam érdemes összesíteni a hozzászólások eredményeit. [...]
Feir 1556 days ago
http://www.gexiaofei.com/blog/I have used wordpress, movabletype and ModX for some ogf my sites. I like wp and mt best any way.
typo3 Guy 1555 days ago
http://www.cms-beauties.comI Think Typo3 is the best CMS for SEO – you can create valid Pages with any sourcecode / tags / url´s you like.. It takes some time 2 firure out how everything works – but the strong comunitiy and tons of extentions will help you — sorry 4 my bad english
RKF 1555 days ago
Wow … never thought I’d have to wait until #42 to hear some support for Movable Type. I’ve had good success with it, and have ported all my WP sites to MT.
Lea de Groot 1555 days ago
http://elysiansystems.com/WordPress’s biggest advantage is the large number of developers and users – security problems are spotted quickly and fixed quickly.
SEO out of the box is moderately sucky and the majority of themes need major patching before they are ready for real use
jc 1555 days ago
http://www.bfcblog.co.ukJoJo is a neat little CMS with SEO in mind, clean code, css and some seo features. There not a massive comminuty behind it so not many plug ins compared to joomla / wordpress but what has been developed so far looks good.
http://www.jojocms.org
Tye 1555 days ago
http://www.aguawebs.comtextpattern – it rocks
Thomas 1555 days ago
http://www.redseoblog.comdefinitelly wordpress. easy to handle many blog with desktop blogging software. so damn logins just blog all day long
SEO Design 1554 days ago
http://www.directhealthshop.com/seodesign/I’m a big fan of WordPress, especially since v3.2.1 it does proper 301 redirects (www- or non-www, with trailing-/ or without etc), and with the seo pack plugin it’s really good now.
And there’s also Drupal which seems alright
James 1553 days ago
Has anyone else here tried ArticleLive? Its very SEO and I find it handy to use for a wide range of different sites I produce. Have a look if you guys are interested: http://www.interspire.com/articlelive/
James 1553 days ago
I guess wordpress if you’re looking for a free tool. If you’re prepared to go the commercial route, I’d say ArticleLive. Has anyone else here used it? I find it useful for using for a wide range site types that I make. It also handles SEO rather nicely. If anyones interested, take a peak: http://www.interspire.com/articlelive/
James 1553 days ago
Oops, only just noticed my double post, feel free to delete one. I thought I accidentally refreshed the page before posting, but it appears I must have submitted the form. My bad!
John 1551 days ago
I have a question; talking about content management systems.
Does anyone know of a good open source or paid for Client Management System
similar to cms except I want to manage all my clients SEO work from a central DB.
e.g I run a report and upload it to my ClientMS, my client is able to login and view that report etc.
Car Wallpapers 1551 days ago
http://www.dieselstation.comI am using Joomla and so far its doing the job. Although the modules and components in market are not the best, they are expensive and make your site more slow!
Tom Lawreszuk 1550 days ago
http://seo.vandesign.caAs a seo I have to say that the easiest way to find satisfying CMS is to build it yourself. As an alternative you can use joomla, but to have it working in search engine friendly environment will take you months of adjustments.
Vancouver Escorts 1548 days ago
Vancouver EscortsMy vote is for drupal for small to large business. I’m also a little concerned to read what people have been saying about my beloved cms. With a few tweaks of the .htaccess file and a number of free modules such as clean urls and url alias with a little more tweaking of robots.txt you have no duplicate content issues and a great site for SEO and delivering content to the users.
With this CMS and obviously other work, I’ve taken a number of sites from new 3 months ago to page 1/2 for our targetted keywords, our newer keyword phrases are still back on page 4-6 but moving up.
If you’re looking for simply a blog, I would go the way of WordPress, though is that really a CMS?
marjk rushworth 1548 days ago
http://www.markrushworth.comi use BP Blog (free and ASP) which with some mods if powerful… the author is also doing a CMS of a sorts based on pages which looks promising.
Eric Marchetti 1544 days ago
What about SEO impact?
dANIELE 1535 days ago
http://www.nascar.it/web-marketing/consulenza-web-marketing/servizi-di-web-marketing.htmlI use Joomla! which won Open Source CMS Award 2007. It’s very SEO oriented and simple to use.
John 1529 days ago
JohnDrupal is great for SEO. There are some duplicate content issues, but they’re easily fixed. In fact, I wrote an article about it. Google for “Drupal SEO”, you’ll see it
Web Developer 1473 days ago
http://http//www.demonzmedia.comThe problem with content management systems is that they frequently clash with good design and development workflows. For instance, typically a CMS will use a templating system that redirects the template from a directory that is not at the root. If you use Dreamweaver templating or any other sort of templating during development this gets very frustrating as it will break the relative linking of everything. I recently had this problem with wordpress and we ended up rewriting some of the back-end code of workpress so it find the template at the root directory, hence it doesn’t break the relative linking for stylesheets etc. Otherwise you will need to have seperate templates for your static pages and your blog, which could get very annoying.
We have also used MODX and Joomla. I’m quite fond of Joomla as it makes extensibility (writing modules etc.) easier, but this was after extensive modification to make it search engine friendly. ModX was the most search engine friendly product out of the box. WordPress had similar problems to Joomla in terms of needing to be modified.
Zaigham 1467 days ago
http://zidesigns.comI vote for modxcms. Though it doesn’t automatically provide ALT tags for images but I guess there is no software/cms which provides the same.
web design agency 1464 days ago
http://www.nascar.itNew release for Joomla! 1.5, great!
Hatch 1391 days ago
http://hatchmedia.co.ukWordPress is by far the most flexible platform for CMS. Its ease of use for content management makes this my choice for all client projects.
Also the wordpress community is huge so support is second to none with frequent plugins available.
Harvey 1390 days ago
http://www.jojocms.orgWe developed Jojo CMS to be devoid of dupe content problems, because as mentioned most CMS’s get this wrong.
Each page has code that compares the actual URL with the correct URL and does a 301 if they don’t match. Fixes all problems relating to PHPSESSID, users renaming pages, pagination issues around page1, www vs non-www, random querystring variables etc.
This works great, but you need to be careful with Adwords and things that add tracking data to the querystring that you don’t want redirected.
Our community is just getting started, but we feel that our out-of-box SEO is up there with the best.
List Your Vacation Rental 1328 days ago
Are we talking about blog’s or full featured CMS’s? If’s it’s a blog, for me their is no question – WordPress.
If your looking for a full featured CMS, I am pretty fond of Drupal.
Granted it is not super friendly to the search engines in a standard config. But once you get the URL structure set up & make it so it doesn’t’ produce duplicate content galore, etc. Your sitting on a pretty tight FREE CMS.
Danielle 1319 days ago
http://allyours.virginmedia.comatm,amcontractingHello
Am doing an SEO contract for a company and tehy are currently using Teamsite as a CMS system. Has anyone had any experiences (good or bad) using it for SEO? Also any tips are welcome!
Cheers
D
Trezora Art Glass, Fashion Jewelry 1273 days ago
http://www.trezora.comI am curious if any of the previous 68 coomenters have built and e-business site. I have a custom and outdated CMS and shopping cart and am looking to upgrade to something more standard and full featured.
Shopping carts integrate CMS and do an absolute horrible job of it. After much research, I think I have locked in on C-Cart.
ChrisB 1251 days ago
http://www.shortcututopia.comI have been searching a long time for a CMS that has the right SEO qualities. Ive tested Joomla, wordpress, Drupal and MODx. So I guess the holy grail is still out there. I found out that which ever CMS you choose you need to alter and tailer the CMS for SEO. Drupal is the most complex and badly documented. Joomla is the most cluttered in the html code and wordpress is the lightest nut tailored towards blogs. So for my Adsense site at http://www.shortcututopia.com I am testing modx and wordpress. I will hopefully let you all know how everything works out.
Jay Gilmore (smashingred) 1251 days ago
http://www.smashingred.comThe problems with out of the box CMS systems and SEO is that there are no standards of SEO. Many practices are common but many users, designers and SEO implementers will have their own individual needs for the project.
With that, it only makes sense that in every case, for every person they will need to customize their CMS to suit. The trick is to find the CMS that doesn’t create barriers or worse make it impossible to achieve your desired setup. So the perfect Free Open Source CMS is the one that has the least amount of effort to achieve your goal.
BTW: I’m on the modx CMS team (Marketing) and if you have any suggestions or links for SEO best practices, please share.
AmaliaMendos 1233 days ago
http://amazing.eu.md/Hey. I’m sorry for offtopic. Where you download this theme for site? I realy love it.
Amalia
The SEO Friendly CMS 1176 days ago
[...] they are certainly worth investigating. Dave Naylor’s blog has a great discussion going on search engine friendly content management systems. Spend your time and treasure on something more interesting. If you are still bent on taking this [...]
Jeff 1130 days ago
http://www.wakefly.com/Partners/Ektron.aspxEktron is a great CMS for SEO; multilayer image tags, dynamic, etc. It’s really not that expensive either – (although no comparison to wordpress) but I’ve had some great SEO results with Ektron. Big sites will be well served by Ektron’s SEO friendly controls.
Jesse L Anderson 1080 days ago
http://www.pixelsilk.comPixelsilk (http://www.pixelsilk.com)
I wouldn’t normally make a shameless plug blog entry, but the question was asked.
WordPress does make a decent CMS for the right client (usually very light CMS requirements), but as businesses get more serious about content management WordPress becomes less of an option.
For many CMS systems, SEO was an afterthought and though there are some decent plug-ins to many of the popular CMSs, Pixelsilk (http://www.pixelsilk.com) is a content management system that was built from the ground up by SEOs for SEOs. We debuted at SMX West just 10 days ago and had great reception.
Some notable features:
1. Fulll HTML control.
2. Full URL Control.
3. Pixelsilk Search Advice system allows for SEOs to deliver branded, page specific advice to the person editing the page, while they are editing the page.
4. Extensible via APIs
Please feel free to check out the website and request a demo.
Staffan Lindsgård 1032 days ago
http://www.tigerbla.seIt’s CMSMS (CMS Made Simple) all the way for me. It’s really easy to make SEO friendly sites in it since you’ve got full control over the site in a simple way. All templates are edited right in the system and just about everything can be coded to your own liking. It’s also stable and fast.
Online Shopping Centre 1017 days ago
http://www.shoppershub.co.uk/Its not easy to simply choose one as a universal best as everyone has a different need. But wordpress and Drupal should do for most as they do well in search engines as well.
Custom Website Design 973 days ago
http://www.s-axxis.com/I believe Joomla is best CMS for SEO
Website SEO 969 days ago
http://www.traffictrigger.comWithout effective SEO (search engine optimization) you may as well not even be online, with the traffic that you’ll miss out on.
KingsRansom 950 days ago
It all depends on the content of the website; that will determine what is needed to keep the content flowing on a continous basis. I know sites like http://www.vacationrentalsad.com use a very advanced OS, while the simple “blog” uses WordPress/Blogger easy scripting.
Jaimie Sirovich 864 days ago
It’s a bit of a stale post … but re: that shameless plug:
Pixelsilk may be great if it actually does what you want out of the box, but you have no control over the source, as with any SAAS solution. If it doesn’t do what you want, then you resort to the API. If the API doesn’t do it, then you’re up the creek.
You can’t just throw buzzwords at the problem. Marketers love to do that … but an API is limited by definition. It’s an interface to “talk” to the source code, not the source code. Bespoke is generally the ultimate solution, based, of course on some off-the-shelf components. That, or SAAS with a path to bespoke. PixelSilk does not offer that.
WordPress in some circumstances is a much better choice than PixelSilk, and it’s free. Sorry guys.
Jesse L Anderson 863 days ago
http://www.pixelsilk.comJamie, thanks for speaking directly to this so we have the opportunity to speak more to this. Pixelsilk allows full HTML control – when we say full, we mean it. ALL of the HTML from the beginning DOCTYPE tag to the ending html tag is ALL under your control. Same goes for URL control. For any page the URL can be whatever you want it to be (as long as it is a valid URL of course and it doesn’t already exist for another page). This is quite a different concept than most CMS’s take but it’s simple and elegant.
The API allows full rendering manipulation. Each piece of content and theme element can be fully modified via the API on-the-fly before rendering. Not sure how you can get much more control than that.
As one of the main developers working in Pixelsilk, I can attest that I prefer a mature API to modifying source code. Modifying source code should be a last resort (even if I have to modify the source code I am wishing that I didn’t have to). Using an API helps to ensure you don’t exit, or make difficult, the upgrade process. In Pixelsilk the focus is on the rendered HTML, the API functions allow you to access the same functions Pixelsilk itself uses to render that HTML. For a comparison of Pixelsilk’s rendering cleanliness compared to other CMSs please see http://www.seoconsultants.com/validation/showdown/cms and note the only one in that list with a perfect score.
As for the reference to ‘free’, Pixelsilk is working on a Community version. See http://www.pixelsilk.com/community for more information and stay tuned! Thanks for the comments and we welcome the opportunity to show you a demo if curiosity prevails.
Chandresh 863 days ago
http://www.worlofinternet.wordpress.com/It is a great content for the knowledge of content management system.
Jaimie Sirovich 862 days ago
http://seoegghead.com/.
Jaimie Sirovich 862 days ago
http://seoegghead.com/Jesse,
Kudos to WordPress for freezing and eating my last comment. I bet PixelSilk wouldn’t do that
Your answer was thoughtful, I don’t think it addresses everything, and you’re referring mostly to static content. The full-control of URLs is nice, but the lack of it isn’t a dealbreaker in a CMS. I’ve written in my book “Search Engine Optiimization with PHP,” that some sort of “hackability” structure is important, so they shouldn’t really be *totally* arbitrary anyway. Joomla, Drupal, etc. allow for this.
I don’t mean to put down PixelSilk in any way, and it’s got an interface with polish that nothing I’ve written can touch, and that’s a perk … but here’s what I’m getting at:
0. No matter how awesome an API is, it can be limiting. That’s true of every API I’ve ever seen, and it’s even hinted by the “interface” part of API. What you cited says the API makes you omnipotent over *static* content. What if I need dynamic, interactive content?
1. As an example, PixelSilk does not appear to have built-in search. Not that Joomla or Drupal has a great search module, but if I wanted to, I could contribute one. Even your web site uses Google custom search.
There would be no way for me to add this module via your API. In Joomla or Drupal it could be done. Yes, I’d actually have to do it, but it could be done.
2. Your product is great, and what’s implemented is polished, but I can say the same thing for a different “SAAS” product, Volusion. Volusion is great … when it does what you want. But if it doesn’t, there’s no path. You have to migrate, which is painful.
This story is echoed all over the internet. Volusion is a similarly awesome product.
3. I agree with lots of things you said re: source code. Editing source to get stuff done is not a good idea, nor is it productive. However, sometimes it is *necessary* to add a new dynamically-driven feature. Ideally, the addition or module would extend the software in a way that facilitates productivity. An API can’t always do that as I said above.
4. That study re: validation won’t impress me as long as Google.com itself doesn’t validate. http://validator.w3.org/. Go ahead, try it on Google’s home page. “Validation” is an on-page factor. It is not in search’s interest to care. Semantics can be important, but if one forgets to slash-terminate a “br” tag, I don’t think that will materially affect rankings. As a developer, I think you’d agree with me.
I’m sure PixelSilk is awesome, but unless there is a path/license that can permit access to source, I don’t think it’s suitable for *everyone*. It looks awesome for static content, but it’s not a coup d’etat, esp. if you think you’ll need things that may be hindered by the lack of source code down the road.
Granted, “bespoke” is not always the best option, and the answer is never clear-cut in every way. I think I was fair, though. An API can be a dead-end.
Jesse L Anderson 861 days ago
http://www.pixelsilk.comJaimie, Thanks for your comments and good discussion points. For clarity, I would like to say that I am not talking about static content. Even the dynamic content is 100% HTML editable. Actually all of the content is dynamic, even what you might call ‘static’ HTML pages.
Also, yes you can use the API to add a search module. There is already one written using Lucene.NET as the engine that we may adopt into our core code.
I also agree that validation isn’t the holy grail of ranking. The point in mentioning the validation wasn’t to say that validation is the key, it was to show that Pixelsilk renders no hardcoded HTML. We validate well because we give web developers easy access to all of the HTML, including dynamic content (Pixelsilk’s homepage is dynamic content) without needing knowledge of server-side coding technologies.
Most people have a preconceived view on CMS, and therefore Pixelsilk, and how things ‘must be working’ under the hood. After getting a demo and working with Pixelsilk, most folks find our approach both unique and flexible.
I do enjoy the opportunity to talk about Pixelsilk’s strengths. Though, I will agree that Pixelsilk isn’t going to be for everyone. There are instances where applications other than Pixelsilk may be a perfect fit. WordPress is a wonderful blogging platform. Actually in our opinion, it’s the best at blogging. People are even able to get it to do some decent content management as well. That said, WordPress isn’t for everyone either.
So many websites that need SEO, so few viable content management systems…
Jaimie Sirovich 861 days ago
http://seoegghead.com/Jesse,
That’s an admirable accomplishment, however doing that through the API will cause the following:
0. Additional development time and costs for code tied to a proprietary API.
1. Increase latency and decrease speed.
Some things belong at the application layer. Search is one of them.
I’ve written CMSes, and abstraction is a double-edged sword. At a certain point, abstraction becomes painful. An overly abstract API will have problems too. Sometimes you’re better off not trying to abstract it at all, and just slap it in directly as a practical matter.
What I’m getting at is very simple — Drupal and Joomla! *do* come with source, and that’s a big advantage no matter how you spin it. They lack some polish, but I wouldn’t say they’re “non-viable.”
I think PixelSilk is better, but I’d still want an option to license the source. I don’t think PixelSilk can be the holy grail without it.
Agenzia Web Marketing 848 days ago
http://www.webmarketing-italy.itWow, I never knew that Content Management Systems That’s pretty interesting…
John Pelko 829 days ago
http://www.updateablewebsite.comPersonally, I like Updateable Website. Simple enough to implement design in just under an hour and just enough functionality that customers arent calling asking endless questions.
Bruno 803 days ago
http://www.anonsolutions.comI like using CMS because with Fantastico I can update in seconds.
Vancouver Movers Canada 800 days ago
http://www.vincentmoving.comI have found that open source beats commercial CMS hands down, absolutely no competition.
Joomla is the best in my opinion because of it’s absolutely massive community of developers and the 4000 free extensions available.
I believe that going commercial for a CMS these days is not an option anymore.
Joe 798 days ago
http://vacation4men.comGuys this may sound like a silly ? but what is the difference between joomal and mambo.
John 786 days ago
My personal opinion is Drupal. I have played with them all and Drupal (espeically 6.0) is easiest to use, has tons of modules, can support many purposes and has lots of template available – although be careful with the ones on template monster. It also aligns well with SEO – here’s a template SEO plan I used when building my Drupal site.
http://www.thefreeseoguide.com/content/chapter-thirteen-building-your-seo-plan-template
Jack 782 days ago
http://www.westsend.comI looked at drupal and the templates are far from being as nice as Joomla, I haven’t seen many rounded corners and pastel colors. I did some research on Joomla VS Drupal for SEO and if you use the SEF (search engine friendly URL’s) you get the same SEO advantages as Drupal. Additionally, Joomla has more extensions available to facilitate link sculpting, cross linking content, meta tag generators, link exchange and no follow meny links modules.
Tom 756 days ago
http://www.vancouvertransfer.comWhat about wordpress? I heard that it’s better for SEO…all CMS have screwed URL’s. I know that Joomla has multiple SEF extensions, so does Word Press, so I wonder why they say it’s better than Joomla for SEO. Any actual proof or testing out there?
Mike Allan 645 days ago
http://www.digitalmediatoronto.com@SEOGolfer – Sharepoint is an ugly CMS from an SEO Standpoint, it has the typical Microsoft code bloat. it also has some funny meta tags that no one recognizes.
Hands down the best is WordPress. Sure “out of the box” it isn’t completely SEO friendly but there are a number of plugins that make it very SEO friendly.
Digital marketing 600 days ago
http://dunguyen.com/WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are top notch. Vote for them all.
Jay 583 days ago
http://techsling.comAt present I am on WordPress and Joomla although I find WP to be my favourite in terms of seo. I’m going to give some of the other cms a try and hopefully get better results.
Harley Pennington 379 days ago
http://www.adwords2profits.com/SEO/There are really only two types of SEO: one makes you money, and the other … just makes you mad. SEO has changed a lot – it’s changing every day.That’s why I want to become a Certified SEO Consultant.
Joe 379 days ago
http://www.vacation4men.comJoomla is the best . I think it’s put together real well .
Joe .