While surfing on the net and searching for a good CMS, my first stop was Joomla. I was at that point very curious about it, and the support forums seem to be pretty much helpful, even for newbies like me. I gave it a try, looked over this great tool, with its hundreds of plugins and numerous free themes. It was big! You could do so many things, it would be a great CMS… Unless you just want a blog platform. Then, building or even customizing a theme gets a bit too complicated for a guy like me. Moreover, I would not use 10% of these great apps.

So I looked for something smaller, but with the same spirit. Something which could fit for a small website like this one. And then… Let’s see what possible choices you get (I made my own selection within the few names I knew: do not hesitate to bring some more ideas) :

• Dotclear: this French blogging tool distributed under GNU General Public License was said to be preety good, efficient, and the examples I saw on the Net were… Well, like Wordpress, here below. Unluckily, the community size cannot be as big as an English language CMS.
• Typepad: I know, it is not a properly speaking CMS, Typepad is in fact a blogging service, used by many different people from all over the world. It is however a paid service, and the customizing possibilities do not seem as big a in other blog platforms.
• Blogger: Like Typepad, it is a blogging platform, quite famous, and even more since Google got control over it. Simple to use, ready in a few steps and more and more customizable, it is a attractive tool. However as all the other blogging platforms, it has its limits, and would definitely not be a good choice for a designer.
• Wordpress: This was my final choice. Wordpress is now a 5-year old blogging tool, as its funding developer Matt says it in a recent article. Do not hesitate to go throught it if you want to know a bit more about Wordpress history.

I made my choice considering that Wordpress gathers lots of users and consequently a big community, which is really handy when you need some help. Moreover the upgrades are regular and the developing team keeps working hard to propose a good tool to the users. The result is that Wordpress has now become more than a blogging tool; you can use it as a normal CMS thanks to numerous available plugins allowing you to customize as much as you can imagine!

Of course, this tool has its own limits and weak points, but more on that in later posts. You can subscribe to my feed here.

If you want to know more about blogging platforms, do not hesitate to browse Specky Boy’s Top 10 Free Blogging platforms!