With so many different Content Management Systems (CMS) solutions available for website development, it is sometimes hard to understand what is best for your company website. One of the most popular platforms currently used is WordPress. It was originally developed as a blogging system and its intuitive design makes it quick and easy to use. For this reason, it was taken on board by developers to repurpose into content management systems for simple websites.

In its simplest form, WordPress lends itself well to being used as a CMS, it requires very little setup time, so you can have a basic website up and running within a matter of hours.

Wordpress also has a wide range of plugins available that can be added to the platform to build in additional functionality. The system has a very fast development cycle which means there are updates and improvements being made available all the time.

However we'd offer a word of caution. There are also many disadvantages to using WordPress as a Content Management System. If you require anything other than a simple, single-topic website or blog system, WordPress does not have the capacity to manage additional functionality without extensive modification to its core code. If your goal is to build a professional website with the flexibility to expand and be adapted, then you will need a fully realised CMS that will grow with your business such as Absolute's CMS 4.0.

As highlighted earlier, one of the apparent advantages of the WordPress system is the wealth of plugins offered. However, as there is no way to moderate the standard of the coding used to create them, many of the popular plugins are riddled with bugs, which could contain errors that in some cases will cripple your websites performance and make it extremely hard to cleanly upgrade further.

Another point of concern is that the general skill level of the developers who primarily use WordPress tends to be low, as the system is extremely easy to use and does not require the same level of expertise as when deploying a professional CMS. This becomes problematic when issues occur, as these developers won't necessarily possess the required skills to fix or adapt your platform.

If you are considering the development of a new website it is important that you consider a system that is managed and capable of growing with your business. By doing this you will be able to maximise the long term potential of your investment. Here at Absolute we have a CMS that we know inside out. Furthermore, because we have developed the platform ourselves, we can easily add extra functionality. We have existing modules for blogs, live chat, online questionnaires, quote calculators, recruitment modules, meet the team, newsletters, affiliate tracking and many more. On top of this, if required, we can develop fully bespoke functionality to suit a business's unique requirements, taking new or existing processes and improving their efficiency and accessibility online.