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Which CMS should you choose for your blog? A review of the best solutions

Which CMS should you choose for your blog? A review of the best solutions

In one of our earlier articles we wrote about how to launch your own blog and earn from it. Before launching a site it is important to choose the right CMSfor it to run on. To help you, we have put together a review of all the main content management systems, their strengths and their weaknesses. 

We are not compiling a ranking, because any score would be subjective. We will try to describe the capabilities of each platform objectively. 


MODX 

One of the best content management systems for running a blog. Many large resources in the internet marketing and SEO niche run on it. The system is quite versatile, but it suits blogs and corporate sites — ones that do not sell goods and services online — best of all. 

What is good about this CMS? 

  • It is free. 

  • There are many themes for it. You can even use themes from other content management systems. 

  • The platform is excellent for a blog; there are many functions and parameters you can adjust to suit yourself. 

  • A very simple, intuitive interface in the admin panel. 

The drawbacks of MODX: 

  • the CMS is not the most widespread, so there are few forums where you could consult other developers and webmasters on technical questions;

  • the set of themes is comparatively small. 

The security of the system 

According to the figures for 2018, MODX is one of the least frequently hacked systems. Less than a percent of hacker attacks fall on it, and successful break-ins are fewer still. Configured properly, a blog on MODX will be reliably protected. 

MODX suits professional developers who can bring out all the advantages of the system. 

The official MODX site:  https://modx.com 

WordPress — the market leader

The most popular CMS. More than 25% of all sites on the internet run on this engine. An impressive achievement, you will agree. The sites of many top media outlets run on WordPress: the New Yorker, BBC America, Time and dozens of others. 

The secret of WordPress's success is that it was originally created as a CMS for blogs and corporate sites. The platform became versatile only later. 

Advantages: 

  • the core of the system is free;

  • thousands of plugins are available for the most varied functions, and most add-ons come in both free and paid versions;

  • even the free plugins are enough to make a site functional, reasonably attractive and secure; later, when the blog becomes profitable, you can invest in buying the paid versions (Elementor Pro, for instance);

  • the CMS is fully localised;

  • there are dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs, forums and chats on the internet devoted to WordPress;

  • the system is very popular, so it will not be hard to find a good developer for relatively little money;

  • the system is easy to install and configure;

  • thousands of tutorials on WordPress are available.

What drawbacks does WordPress have? Here it is more a matter of difficulties in learning the system. In our subjective view the CMS has a great many settings, and working through them all takes time. 

Because of the enormous quantity of tutorials, it is not easy to find useful, good-quality content on WordPress. Sometimes it simply drowns in material written by amateurs. 

Plugins for a blog on WordPress 

Modern WordPress plugins make it possible to extend a blog's functionality and make it more attractive to users. Plugins are the instrument for solving most tasks, and they will be useful while the blog is being set up as well. Let us look at several components and what they can do. 

Content Timeline 

Everyone says that content is king and that good content in your blog will bring plenty of visitors. That is true, but without convenient navigation within the blog's sections you will lose out. One solution to the problem is the Content Timeline plugin, which displays content as a sliding timeline. Thanks to that, more people visit older blog posts that are still relevant but have lost traffic as they moved down the feed. 

InstaShow 

Integrating a blog with Instagram is an excellent way to increase traffic to the blog and improve interaction with the audience you already have. You know that most users are visual people. Connecting Instagram will let you vary the content in the blog and improve the site's behavioural factors. 

What the InstaShow plugin can do: 

  • sharing content on Twitter and Instagram;

  • support for embedded video content;

  • adding a call-to-action button;

  • showing an unlimited number of photographs;

  • displaying an unlimited number of photographs. 


Blog Manager 

It contains more than 20 templates for a blog's structure and an interface for assembling your own blog on a drag-and-drop principle. The plugin also extends the blog's functionality considerably. 

The main advantages of the plugin: 

  • it makes the design responsive;

  • it offers a choice of several different styles;

  • it supports building lists and embedding them in any page of the site;

  • convenient page numbering and pagination settings;

  • it lets you configure the posts in the blog. 

Ninja Popups 

A plugin for creating and configuring pop-up windows. In them you can offer discounts, information products, a newsletter subscription and so on. The pop-ups in this plugin integrate easily with mail services: 

  • Getresponse;

  • Mailchimp;

  • Jetpack and others. 

The features of the plugin: 

  • a convenient, clear visual editor that lets you create a window in a few seconds;

  • a built-in pop-up blocker circumvention tool;

  • a large set of animation effects;

  • it works well with mobile devices;

  • an analytics panel for tracking the pop-ups;

  • control over the position the pop-ups appear in. 

WordPress Viral Quiz 

Running polls in a blog is the fastest way to improve behavioural factors and the engagement of blog visitors. Polls can also grow your mailing list by collecting contacts. 

WordPress Viral Quiz helps you quickly create viral polls and quizzes in a WordPress blog. 

What the plugin can do: 

  • creating responsive tests that work well on every mobile device;

  • running multilingual polls;

  • monetising the polls through advertising;

  • buttons for sharing the results of a poll on social media.

Security 

WordPress is the most frequently hacked CMS. Around 90% of all hacker attacks fall on WordPress sites. There is another reason too — the sites of media giants run on WordPress, and they are attacked far more often. 

Even a beginner can set up basic protection against attack on WordPress. A site must have an SSL certificate, the latest version of the CMS and regularly updated plugins. Bear in mind that this will protect the blog only from the simplest methods of attack. 

WordPress can be used by professionals and beginners alike. It is quite possible to build and launch a site on this CMS in a single day. 

October CMS 

Our own site runs on this platform. It is a modern, free, open-source CMS. It is built on the PHP language and the Laravel web application framework. 

Many of its solutions are similar to those in WordPress and MODX, so users who have worked with those systems before will have no trouble finding their way around October. 

The advantages of October CMS 

  • A ready, convenient admin panel with an intuitive interface. 

  • Automatic installation of plugins and a modular principle for connecting them. 

  • A large choice of plugins with varied functionality. 

  • A broad feature set in the out-of-the-box version already. 

  • Simple linking of tables, forms and fields on the site. 

  • Everything needed for basic SEO optimisation is there.

The main technical features 

  • A clear control panel for the site. Even if you know nothing about web development, administering a site on October CMS will not be difficult. 

  • There is a large choice of plugins. The add-on store is fairly young but developing rapidly; new free and paid components appear constantly. 

  • The system is convenient for web development. 

  • Good support and documentation. Every question to do with administering sites and with web development is described in sufficient detail. There are also groups on social media and chats in messengers.  

Joomla 

One of the leaders among content management systems. This engine is very versatile and capable. But there is another side to it — Joomla is very complex even for experienced developers. 

Advantages: 

  • the system is free;

  • many free and paid components have been built to extend its functionality;

  • good, fully translated documentation is available;

  • there is a large community of specialists, with forums and blogs on technical questions about Joomla. 

Drawbacks: 

the main drawback of Joomla is its complexity, and that applies both to administration and to configuring themes. Working with this CMS will definitely require an experienced and expensive developer.

Security 

Sites on Joomla account for a little over 4% of all hacker attacks. Security problems in this system are mainly caused by the CMS and its additional components not being updated on time. 

The official Joomla site: https://www.joomla.org

Conclusions 

Depending on the goals of the project and your budget, you can choose any of the four content management systems. What matters is setting up the process of working with the blog, from building the site to administering and promoting it. And of course you will need a reliable foundation for the project — hosting from Host4Biz. 

Read our articles and order hosting!