One of the dilemmas faced when we begin to develop a web site is also the choice of an appropriate CMS. There are a huge number of freeware and paid CMS solutions from which developers must choose the most suitable for the web site in which they work.
Themers
Many designers work only on developing free and payed themes for different content management systems. Changing theme is easy and fast way to refresh your website with new design and make it more interesting for visitors and members. Every CMS is using different template engine so you’ll need to learn all their features and differences if you want to develop themes for more than one CMS. Choosing one CMS for developing themes makes your job easier but it also makes your customers base smaller.
My experience
During my work I have tried numerous different cms solutions, because I did not know their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. I spent a lot of time testing all their features before finally ending up with CMS which offered all i needed. When you decide to develop themes for some CMS you should have in mind those few requirements.
Documentation
You will need appropriate documentation ( wiki, tutorials or books ) which will help you learn fast all whats needed for theme developement.
Community
CMS with good forums and large community offers better support, so if you stuck with some problem you’ll find solution easier and faster with help and support of others. Large community means many sites are powered by that CMS and it makes finding customers for your themes easier.
Template engine
Fast, logical template engine makes your coding faster and easier ( for example use of shortcodes in e107 CMS {HEADER}, {SITELINKS} ). Every designer wants his final product to look as close to what was envisioned in its original design.
Plugins
More plugins means more features which can be implemented into website fast and easy, without need to create custom solutions.
My choice?
My first themes were developed for e107 CMS, I made more then 100 free, premium and custom themes for this CMS. I also completly recoded their templates into pure CSS removing tables from layouts. Bad thing was that this CMS really has bad support, no enough documentation and it has slow developement. All those reasons were enough to find new CMS which was easier to work with. I worked with joomla and drupal before ending with wordpress which provided all i need for my work. Huge community and great support with more than enough documentation and plugins make this cms perfect for my work. All i design in gimp is easily coded into nice theme and brought to life online.
Conclusion
This article isn’t there to advertise wordpress as CMS but only to give you some guides which could help you to make right choice.
