As some readers of this blog will know my brother runs a Web development business from home, Constitution Computing. We both started making websites way back in 2000. Most sites back then were static and hard coded. In the case of database driven Web sites we coded the site from scratch.

Nowadays this is not the way things are done. Websites usually use a content management system, the problem is there are hundreds of them on the market. We have also been bitten on the arse by content management systems before - where numerous inexplicable bugs would appear for no apparent reason.

I have used a content management system for my blog for many years. When I first started I tried to develop my own blog software and in the end I gave up because other people had already done it for me. I moved on to a program called Movable Type. This program used a combination of Pearl, PHP and CGI. It was a little bit of a disaster because of it. Movable type was only a tiny bit easier than operating my own blog software.

Finally I moved on to WordPress 3.0.2 - by far the best blog software I’ve seen. The only problem with using popular software is that it can sometimes be abused by spammers. The one thing I never had to worry about when running my own Web software is that only I used it - there was no point for spammers to develop spam bots to target only one site. Spam was a constant battle on both Movable Type and WordPress. Track back spam was by far the worst on both platforms.

Yesterday I decided to install the latest version of WordPress. Upgrading was a big thing for me as it has always caused innumerable problems later on. I’d also just updated the theme on my website - a surprisingly fiddly all day process. Upgrading could potentially negate all my hard work, but it needed to be done.

I am a firm believer in pessimism. Contrary to popular belief pessimists are far more likely to be happy. I always prepare myself for the worst. This way if the worst does not occur I am pleasantly surprised, if it does, I have the satisfaction knowing I was correct. It’s a win-win.

I backed up my old WordPress installation and then deleted it off the Web server. I then uploaded the latest version of WordPress. In the browser I then went to the update page. It immediately detected my old WordPress database and automatically upgraded it so it would work with the new version. I went to my website and it worked!

At this stage I was still a little worried as my nice new theme had been deleted by the new WordPress installation. The fix for this was incredibly easy. My layout was an edited version of the WordPress default theme. I simply went to where I had backed up my old WordPress installation and changed the name of the theme from default to christheme. I uploaded it and then went to the themes page in WordPress admin selected the theme and it worked.

I was then overcome with a feeling of pleasantly surpriseadness.

Anyway I told my brother about my experiences with WordPress. This set us wondering whether content management systems have reached the maturity we need to make Web site development easier?

We have been looking at Joomla and Drupal both open source content management systems. It’s a difficult decision.

If anyone has any experience with content management systems we would love to hear from you in the comments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Blogging, Software, War against spam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.