CMS Face Off

Clients always want to know the "best" content management system. Frankly it depends on what they want their website to do. After discussing their feature list I'm usually pretty confident on what to recommend.

But what about new and different cms I haven't had the opportunity to work with? Just because I have a list of systems I know inside and out, I want to give others their chance. Maybe a new black horse will win my heart.

So I've decided to do a little friendly competition. I'm going to set up different cms with the same layout and content. I also want to use this as an opportunity to review best practices on system I already know.

The design will come from html5up.net because I'm not a designer. I want to test a broad range of content so sites will have the typical blog entries (scrapped from this list of 90s music - thanks Buzzfeed, allmusic.com and azlyrics.com), basic company landing pages (About, Contact), an events calendar and a contact form. I haven't decided if my goal is to only use native cms functionality or go wild with plugins.

Do you have a cms you like working with or have heard a lot about? Let me know what it is and I'll try to add it to the list.

First off, I'm sort of excited to match up WordPress and ExpressionEngine. Secondly, I've heard really good things about CraftCMS. I can't wait to try it.