These days its rare we ever get a call from anybody who wants an HTML website - the age of CMS has matured and become the standard for all websites, large and small. Joomla, Wordpress, and Drupal have become more than just developer tools - many people are at least familiar with their names, and know the basics of what they do. It only makes sense - why do it by hand when user-friendly software can do the dirty work for you? It's a fantastic concept that is exciting to anyone who has marveled at the power of the internet ant their own inability to participate in its creation. Most people are compfortable enough with internet applications that it doesn't take much for them to get the hang of using a CMS, and use it to manage, update, and refresh their websites by themselves, for free.

But which CMS is right for you? People often come to us with a preference, based on things they have heard or read, and we often reply with our own recommendation based on the nature of their site. Each system has its own strengths, weaknesses and specialties, and each is powered by a different community and is supported in a different way. One major difference is that Wordpress and Drupal are supported by corporations, and Joomla is 100% community driven.

Wordpress is reknowned for its administrative ease and usability, as well as its powerful blogging capabilities and features. Joomla is widely touted as the most extendible, customizable and robust option, with the biggest developer pool creating new addons each day. Drupal is a sturdy, high performance option with excellent technical and software support.

One great piece of advice is to spend more time and effort choosing the right developer, and then let them choose the right platform. They will lilkely be more comfortable and experienced with one over the others, and be able to deliver whatever you need with the tools available to them.

Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal are all fantastic, powerful and versatile solutions - and with each team constantly improving and updating their offerings, they can only get better from here.

Happy Content Managing to all!

Have you ever sat down at the computer to blog only to have a few boring-looking sentences show up? The idea is there, but you just can't get it to be interesting or compelling. Nobody will be reposting this, you think to yourself...

Well, Wordpress has heard the cries of frustrated bloggers everywhere and introduced a new tool. Imagine a robot that goes out to the internet and locates content that you can use in your blog post to beef it up and make it way more attractive. Its called "Zemanta," and comes standard with all Wordpress installations.

Basically, all you have to do when writing an article is get down the general idea, and then Zemanta will present you with a list of related articles, a selection of appropriate images, and tag suggestions.

One click later, and the magical blog angel has added the content to your blog. It gives credit to everything you use, so you can freely click away whenever your post needs a little something extra.

The internet is pretty amazing, and Zemanta is one more tool to harness its power to work for you.

Kudos to Wordpress. Again.