CMS vs purely Custom, for complex website

[gnznroses]

I would like to get others' opinion on whether or not to use Joomla for a project that I and a team are starting. I have no experience with Joomla, and have always developed my projects purely in my own PHP code. To me this seems like the best way forward for our new project as well, but one of our top developers believes fully in using Joomla.

The project involves a fairly complex website, with lots of functionality -- two types of user accounts, administrator accounts/panel to manage/monitor users, transactions between users (eg purchases), and use of third-party APIs (one of our own + Facebook sign-in, etc). I typically think of a CMS as being used for blog/article/content sites, but I understand that any needed functionality could be coded into extensions/plugins/modules/components.

The website will be responsive and adapt to mobile screens.

There will also be native mobile apps. The core functionality of everything will be written as PHP web services, which both the website and app will tap into.

If I had to give an example of what the project is similar to I'd have to say it's akin to the Google Play Store / etc, where you have developers, users, media being searched/browsed/purchased, and all of the related account functions for those two types of users.

We would like people on our team who aren't familiar with coding to be able to make some content changes to the site. Although any changes would ideally be commitable to our subversion repository.

I worry about a few things:
- ability to maintain local/subversion copies of everything, when content changes are made via the Joomla template editing system
- spreading both our PHP and HTML code into lots of modules/templates/etc, making it confusing to edit
- variable scope for when different website elements need to share variables/data
- security/bugs and having to apply patches which may break something
- whether we truly have as much flexibility as a custom-coded project. And if we have to step outside the extensions and edit actual joomla files for any reason then applying updates is a major headache
- having to learn a new way of doing things for questionable benefits

I'm told the benefits are:
- easier to design/edit/manage the front-end
- easier (automatic?) to have the site be responsive
- some built-in functionality that we might use, for accounts, comments, searching, etc?

I don't personally see the benefits of using a Content Management System for this kind of project, where managing the content is a very small aspect of the bigger picture. Using the CMS as a base for what is otherwise a custom-coded project, and having to adapt to fit the CMS's architecture. It seems any benefits would be outweighed by the downsides. Am I wrong here?


 

[dalecosp]

The business case typically all comes down to maintenance, something you've hinted at.

 

Our company's flagship site is based on (a long time ago) a package that was heavily adapted prior to deployment.  As time has gone on, continued customization has put us in a position where we cannot upgrade the package without destroying the site's functionality.

 

That being said, a lot of businesses at least strongly consider what you're talking about --- after all, we did it with a package originally to save time/money on the initial development cost.

 

I don't know what the "fallover" point of customization vs. configuration is, unfortunately; we find we're committed to customization at this point. The original software doesn't scale well enough to support our growing business, so over the last year or so I've found myself replacing large chunks of our functionality with something totally custom that runs a couple of orders of magnitude faster.

 

Doug Henschen wrote a good article on this in Information Week last fall; it might be worth discussing with your staff.

 

Hope this helps,

[QuickOldCar]

Dale summed it up pretty good.

 

 It seems like your team are not really coders, if they are the ones that are going to be making changes then an already made popular cms may be the way to go. Yes at times will be a pain to incorporate some custom additions, but overall the popular cms do have the ability to do it.

Joomla always updates their code along the way which means at times you will have to edit your code to match theirs.

Just the mere fact can get a lot of free plugins and not have to pay people to make it is a plus.

Another plus is it's well documented and popular. This would enable new coders to jump right in fairly fast.

Your top developer wants to use joomla, make them happy, ha ha.

 

 On the other hand if your team consisted of all coders, while you can surely make a full blown cms and all your customizations, there is also the time needed to create and test all of it. If time is not an issue and everything will be properly coded I feel having your own cms is a good thing. Tons of work involved.

 

 I have used and developed with both wordpress and joomla since they came out. It seems every version will have a hiccup, so expect to make changes to remedy those.

 

I'll tell you one of my personal experiences.

  The team consisted of just myself. Wordpress was the cms. Created piles of custom themes,functions and plugins to get it all to work exactly as I wanted. Every so often i would find something not working as expected, and usually after an update (no surprise there). After 3 years of using wordpress that project I found out their prepared queries just didn't cut it for my needs, they were really slow requests, and the built in search was horrible for my needs. I was always fighting their filters. Attracts every spammer in the world.

 

  Essentially my database grew too large for wordpress to handle. I ended up writing my own cms, used only what I needed and wanted and am very glad i did it. I feel good in knowing my code will be the same unless I changed something. Is mostly basic php and created all my own functions, I tried to only use the basic php functions I felt would not get deprecated in the near future.

 

Overall I feel Joomla and Wordpress are fantastic as an out of the box solution. If all the customizations can be accomplished and works fairly fast...that's great.

 

Since you say are unfamiliar with joomla. You can make a custom theme and include the functions right inside it without needed plugins. Or do functions in the theme with additionally making either a huge single plugin, or many small ones. You also have the ability to include custom scripts outside the cms coding. Nothing is set in stone, basically using something like Joomla gives you a big headstart with managing users and additional plugins.