Evaluating legal website technology — KENNETH EDWARD GRAY, JR.

I have been working on evaluating new software to power this website. As unbelievable as it may seem, this is actually one of those old-fashioned hand coded HTML sites (with some scripts thrown in for good measure), so trying to maintain things in a post-Web 2.0 world has become difficult. Based on how long it is taking to redo the finance team blog at GlobalFinance.Net Blog, I am guessing 1-2 weeks before we have something new?

Here are the software packages I am looking at, if there is anybody who has a lot of experience with one particular package and would like to comment, feel free to send in an email:

WordPress.

With millions of installs, how can you go wrong? I have used WP on the finance site as well as a couple of other places, so I am very familiar with it. Advantages are, free, known quantity, a lot of things available. Disadvantages, the occasional security issue, not that flexible for things beyond blogging.
Expression Engine.

A nice CMS with a good reputation. EE has been around for a while and I have been meaning to actually use EE for my site, but the learning curve with getting to know the EE interface and tags has been an issue. Advantages, strong CMS, customizable, can do a lot, secure. Disadvantages, need to spend a few hours to learn well, cost, not as much out there as with WP. I should probably state that I am leaning toward EE, though still undecided.
Telerik.

This is a CMS platform for Windows Server and .NET/ASP. Telerik powers some of the biggest websites in the world, but like Expression Engine, is a decent, scalable CMS so it should fit itself to any size job and be relatively easy to use. However, price is really something to think about here. The software is licensed for about $900 and add on to that licenses for Windows products (WP and EE run on Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL which is no-cost), we are talking expensive. Advantages, beautiful interface, easy to use, secure. Disadvantages, need to manage a Windows Server, price.

That’s the project for the week.

Tagged as: blogging, CMS, expression engine, html, technology, telerik, windows, wordpress