CMSimple vs. Website Baker

Content Management Systems are a must for modern web developers these days; clients want the ability to change the content on their site on their own. In a tough economy clients don’t want to spend lots of money but still expect a lot from their web developer, so it’s important to know which open source Content Management Systems are right for your Clients. CMSimple and Website Baker are two CMS that are worth looking into as they are both open source and absolutely free.

Installing:

The comparison of these two begins during the install, for CMSimple once you download the program and extract the files to your localhost you’re basically done. All you have to do is copy the folder and you can then begin coding your new site. Website Baker is not as simple to get going as CMSimple, with Website Baker you must have a php server and mySql installed on your localhost, once you have that done you can begin the install of website baker and it’s a little more complicated. Website Baker is a true database driven website and requires a mySql database to be created before you run the install to create the website. Once the database is created you can run the install file located in the wb folder. The install will bring you to setup screen you will have to enter the information to properly set up your database and website, and then just click the install site and your done. In my opinion CMSimple is wins hand down in the install as it is far easier and doesn’t require a true database, copy the folder and you have a website wherever you put it.

Creating a Website:

Creating and coding a website using CMSimple requires the use of three files in two locations, the content for the site is located in the content folder in a file called content.htm. This is where all the data for every page that is on your site is located in one single htm page. Creating different pages for your site only requires that you place H1, H2 and H3 tags in your code and it will automatically create a new page and generate a menu for you. The next two file that you will need are located in your templates folder and they are the template.htm and the stylesheet.css and this is where of course style your site. The reason I tell you this is that it can be confusing having to go between the two locations to do certain task. The editor in CMSimple is very simple and allows you to do most anything you need to accomplish.


Website Baker is much more robust with its way of doing the coding and creating pages, once you have it installed it will bring you to the control panel where you can modify any of the settings in your site and create new pages at the click of a button. Website Baker is far ahead in this area and I really like the simplicity of its control panel, even for the new developers it easy to understand. The editor is easy to use and straightforward and allows you to upload all types of media to your site and it will even unzip them for you, how cool is that? Website Baker is the winner here by far and I truly love the control panel. Although both CMSimple and Website Baker have templates that you can download and install Website baker wins here again, Website Baker had many different templates to choose from and you can install any template from the control panel and choose which one you want to use, so at the click of a button you can choose which style you like and the look the you need for you clients.

Which Do I Choose?

That is a toughs question to answer; it really depends on the client’s needs and what kind of site they are wanting. CMSimple backs itself up each time you log out of the system which is way cool and you can even configure how many backups you want to keep. Website Baker you have to backup the database manually at the control panel and then make a copy of your folder, but Website Baker is a much more robust CMS. CMSimple and Website Baker both have a loyal following and both will be here for a long time as for which is the best one, hum… I would have to say Website Baker for me. It really depends on the client’s needs as to which one I would use and where. My recommendations are dive into them and decide for yourself which is better for YOU!

Download them both CMSimple and Website Baker and Enjoy !

References:
This one is just from me and are my own thoughts. Scary uh?