I had the following criteria in mind for the Content Management System for binaryninja.co.uk:

• Web Based (must be able to easily update from any machine)
• Quick to setup, configure and maintain
• Flexible enough to allow me to easily insert custom PHP code as needed
• Allow the design of the front end to be easily controlled and modified
• Easy to organise the contents of the site into suitable categories

Having spent the majority of my career developing bespoke Content Management Systems from scratch, it would have made sense for me to build my own system to manage the Binary Ninja web site, but to be honest, I didn’t have the time to undertake it as well as producing all the content. So it made sense to finally take my head out of the sand and have a look at what was freely available. A few systems had been recommended to me by friends, mainly WordPress, Textpattern and Expression Engine so I set to downloading and installing all three. Each was set up with a separate host entry on my laptop (http://word.binaryninja.co.uk, http://text.binaryninja.co.uk and http://ee.binaryninja.co.uk) and an individual database (using phpmyadmin as installed under XAMPP) so they could be kept completely segmented during the tests. Each system pleasantly only took a number of minutes to install and configure resulting in a 3 default web sites ready for content, styling and configuring.

Next on the list was to have a quick play with each system to get a feel for how they hung together and to see if they were suitable for my needs. So I set off creating a series of posts, static pages and links within each which would provide me with the base structure of the site. Now this is where one of the first contenders fell over. Expression Engine just did not fill me with ease of use and understanding. I am sure it is a very powerful and flexible tool once you know how to use it but part of my criteria was speed and ease to setup and this was not going to happen, so I ditched it.. no further, thats it, game over, sorry pmachine.

That left two contenders, Textpattern and WordPress.

Now initially I did have a slight problem with TextPattern and static pages. It took me a little while to work out how to set them up but after some googling and trawling the textpattern documentation I figured it out. However, there was an issue with the way I had set up Static Page links. This meant that once followed, links to the rest of the articles became broke. I spent some more time searching for an answer and ended up registering on the textpattern forum site for help and must say that I was impressed…. the speed of the resolution really shocked me and I offer full thanks to them for that. The rest of textpattern was good, the editor for typing articles was very clean and easy and I liked the way it uses forms allowing you to reuse objects within different pages and sections of the site.

I found Wordpress even easier to create and manage posts, pages and links and liked the overall interface. The editor for adding content was not as smooth as Textpatterns and it sometimes forces me to go into HTML mode to tidy up the Paragraphs. There also appeared to be less options thoughout but it keeps it clean and simple.

Now it was time to start applying a bit of style to the site. I had considered building my own template from scratch but there was a few stumbling points. Firstly, I’m not a designer and I knew that if I was to try designing it myself, it would look rubbish. Second I can’t draw to save my life and third my CSS knowledge is not the most advanced to say the least so I decided the best method for me would be to find a predesigned template and to modify as needed. I found two suitable looking templates, one for each CMS and set about installing them. Wordpress definitely has the upper hand here making it very easily to install the new template by simply dropping it into a themes directory and then selecting it through the admin tool whereas Textpattern required pasting lots of code into different pages and forms within the admin tool. Still relatively easy but not quite as slick.

I then spent some time playing with both systems, editing the CSS to get the look and feel setup as I wanted and tweaking the templates to get the overall format of the site as required. Both were very friendly to use but again I found WordPress had the edge although I did like TextPattern’s CSS Editing tool.

However, duplicating work across two sites is pointless so it became time to make a decision of which system I was going to stick with. Based on the ease of styling, ease of managing the content and coupled with the fact that you could easily integrate PHP straight into the templates and articles, the clear winner in my mind was Word Press. I think I may look at Textpattern again in the future but for my current needs it was a bit too fiddly.