Open source content management has changed the web development business
Adam Henige
May 14, 2009
I'm not yet 31 years old, but I am continuously amazed at the evolution of software, and as a small business owner myself, I find myself often seeking out the newest open source solutions for budgetary reasons. This has manifested itself in using Open Office and a variety of management and organizational tools around the office.
Having worked at a company that did a bit of web development, and had also developed their own proprietary content management system, I was wading into uncharted waters when we developed our first corporate website. We did it on a budget, but we had a connection with a designer who did a nice job developing our site on Wordpress, known to most for its ubiquitous nature in the world of blogging. For a system developed primarily for blogging, I was truly impressed with the flexibility of Wordpress, as we continuously modified it to meet our changing needs.
While there are some awesome websites that have been built on Wordpress, we found it took a lot of continued design work to do what we wanted, and we don't have a developer or a designer on staff. We decided that we were going to move forward with a new website, we just needed to decide how, and at what cost. At that point, we had been working with a variety of companies and been exposed to a variety of different open source content management systems like Joomla, Drupal, and CMS Made Simple. All of them, to my surprise, were remarkably flexible, and extremely easy to use.
After reaching out to some of our partners, it was shocking to realize just how inexpensively we were able to have a custom site developed on these platforms. Ultimately, we went with GreenLite Web Solutions, a Michigan web development company based in Lansing that serves Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and the Tri-Cities. Unlike my days on the outskirts of web development, they (like many of their contemporaries) are able to offer professionally designed custom websites for only a couple thousand dollars, or template designs for far less. A few years ago this would be unthinkable, but with platforms literally costing nothing, there are a large number of organizations that could have their site needs met by one of these open source solutions.
So if you've been out of the game for a while and are looking to freshen up your website, just know that open source has changed the game. It would be easy to think that the quality from companies like GreenLite could be lacking, but in truth it's just an effect of the changing landscape of web design. This isn't your grandfather's internet...in fact, it's not even the internet of my 20s.
Having worked at a company that did a bit of web development, and had also developed their own proprietary content management system, I was wading into uncharted waters when we developed our first corporate website. We did it on a budget, but we had a connection with a designer who did a nice job developing our site on Wordpress, known to most for its ubiquitous nature in the world of blogging. For a system developed primarily for blogging, I was truly impressed with the flexibility of Wordpress, as we continuously modified it to meet our changing needs.
While there are some awesome websites that have been built on Wordpress, we found it took a lot of continued design work to do what we wanted, and we don't have a developer or a designer on staff. We decided that we were going to move forward with a new website, we just needed to decide how, and at what cost. At that point, we had been working with a variety of companies and been exposed to a variety of different open source content management systems like Joomla, Drupal, and CMS Made Simple. All of them, to my surprise, were remarkably flexible, and extremely easy to use.
After reaching out to some of our partners, it was shocking to realize just how inexpensively we were able to have a custom site developed on these platforms. Ultimately, we went with GreenLite Web Solutions, a Michigan web development company based in Lansing that serves Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Jackson, and the Tri-Cities. Unlike my days on the outskirts of web development, they (like many of their contemporaries) are able to offer professionally designed custom websites for only a couple thousand dollars, or template designs for far less. A few years ago this would be unthinkable, but with platforms literally costing nothing, there are a large number of organizations that could have their site needs met by one of these open source solutions.
So if you've been out of the game for a while and are looking to freshen up your website, just know that open source has changed the game. It would be easy to think that the quality from companies like GreenLite could be lacking, but in truth it's just an effect of the changing landscape of web design. This isn't your grandfather's internet...in fact, it's not even the internet of my 20s.
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