This website babchouston.org was originally set up and designed with proprietary software. The company has obviously found it does not have the resources to update so it is cancelling support. I always thought my friend who manages the site was stiffed. But she has a chance to start over. I've researched alot and thought Wordpress was the right way to go. Then I hear about bootstrap, expression engine, process wire and I'm lost. All the functionality of present site needs to be moved. Its a 15GB site with basically password protected membership directory, payments, calender and approx 3500 newsletter email addies functions. Bootstrap sites seem to look clean and easy to read. The chief issues; a) Ease of use for webmaster/person inputting data who has no coding experience b) security now and in future, c) SEO and of course d) responsive these days. One of the other chapters hired a company who used expression engine babcsf.org/ Personally I find it cluttered and it doesn't seem to be responsive. Help!
Hello, - The website being responsive does not depend on the CMS (wordpress, expression engine, joomla ...) but rather on the theme you will use - Security is great with wordpress but only if i would advise not to install many plugins, and if you keep it up to date - There are great plugins for SEO on wordpress used by hundreds of thousands websites and well maintained. I think that the main challenge for you will be to move your content to the new platform, i suggest to use wordpress because - easy to use for webmaster/person maintaining content - thousands of freelancers and companies are familiar with this platform so it cost less to maintain and upgrade - great for seo - you will spend less for a theme as many themes are available in your specific niche allready
I am a non techie but all my research has taken me to the same conclusion. I have people suggesting Lamp technology, or cakephp +mysql I believe, and codeigniter to name but a few. The more I question these coders the more I'm beginning to understand them. One of them actually said that he wondered why I need a developer if I buy something off the shelf....and I think that is the problem. But it still costs money to tie everything together so all the parts work and to code for better design withing the framework. Thanks for your input Gaming Lover.
I think perhaps a bit of schooling is appropriate. First of, you need to understand what you need. As per your description, what you're looking for is a CMS (Content Management System) - such a system is easy to set up, can be customized ad infinitum, and most well-known CMSes provide a plethora of plugins to mostly do whatever you want it to. You can of course also alter the looks of the site by themeing it, and modifiying themes. Inputting content etc. is done easily via an admin-panel, and even non-techies can pick this up quickly. The other stuff you're talking about, like Bootstrap, isn't a CMS, it's a JS/CSS-framework, made to provide responsive design etc. - it's also bloated crap. LAMP (or LAMP-stack) has NOTHING with this discussion - LAMP stands for LinuxApacheMySQLPhp and is basically what type of webserver you're running your site on. There are, of course, other types as well. CakePHP & CodeIgniter are PHP frameworks used to build a site - they do not provide a CMS, or ready-made functionality - they're just tools for inept coders to create webpages. Again, not what you want (most likely). Personally, I think a properly set up Wordpress-site will probably do what you want - however, since I dunno the full requirements, it's hard to say that 100%. What's positive about Wordpress is that it's very well known, there are thousands of themes available, and it's not hard to code your own, there are thousands of plugins, both free and paid, that will make your site into almost anything you want it to be, etc. etc.