Raw Custom Developments

20th July 2009

No Templates, No shortcuts, Completely Original

There are many open source content management systems available today online and the amount of people using these free systems is increasing substantially for a few simple reasons.

The first being that they do not require skill or knowledge of PHP or other development language in order to integrate with the design which makes it very simple for almost anyone with basic computer knowledge to use. The second reason is that there are thousands of templates, plug-ins and contributions available to customize the look and functionality to your requirements and the third and most obvious reason is that it’s free! However, I believe that there is a price to pay.

In the past we have had clients approach us with a website and say – “we were doing great with our website development and needed some additional functionality when all of a sudden the website developer became apprehensive and disappeared…please can you help us?”

This is quite a common problem and the reason is simple: Website developers that use these open source applications can only customize the website within the boundaries of the applicable content management systems and only utilize the tools that are available. Thus when a custom piece of functionality is required that does not already exist within the plug-ins or public contributions, the website developer “gets stuck".

Unfortunately there are also some security problems which are quite common amongst these content management systems. If the standard administrative settings are not changed after a fresh install of your website, you will be left venerable and your site may be hacked. Forgetting to upgrade will also leave your site exposed to problems including any 3rd party extensions you install.

RAW Media Concepts does NOT USE free open source content management systems. Our company culture along with our team of highly competent developers only focus on customised website developments from the first step. This ensures that all projects are boundless and can evolve in any direction and with any scope if necessary.

This also means that because the content management system is specifically customised for your website, it is much faster, easier to use, more reliable and tailored for your specific needs.

This is not to say that say that open source CMS is entirely ominous, in some cases they work well and can be the most cost effective solution, but bear in mind for a long term solution in an ever changing online market you may want an adaptable, tailored solution.