Xara or CMS?

Hi,
I have been lurking around for a while and decided to post.
I know that this has been asked and answered before, but I just can't seem to get a definitive answer.

Firstly, I have to say that I think all Xara products are really easy to use and I find them highly productive.
As my job isn't in design or web development (rather IT consulting) I kind of know what a CMS is and what Dreamweaver is etc. I have used many of them. (Joomla, Mambo, WebGUI, Concrete5, Drupal etc)

What I would like to know is where the 'gotchas' are.

Why use a CMS?

1. You may want to change the look of the site, but keep the content the same
2. Many users are updating the site on a regular basis
3. You want to publish information which will expire on a certain date
4. You need a search engine on the site

Why not use a CMS?

1. The setup of the template is complex, time consuming and restrictive
2. You need to constantly upgrade the CMS software, or you get behind
3. When you want to make a change to one page, you might find it hard to do
4. Changing the template can be hit and miss

Sure, there probably are lots more pros and cons.
Now, if I was managing a site with 100's of pages, then I would use a CMS, or just wordpress.
But, for my own website, which is about 50 pages and doesn't need a CMS I am wondering if I should just build it in Xara?
Xara is so easy to use, it almost seems that it is a toy and that I will get stuck somewhere. I am worried that when I get 99% into the site, I will hit a wall, especially with SEO.

When I look at some of the sites which I like, they might be built on a CMS, but their look is clean and modern. For example, the BI tool we sell is QlikView and to build a similar site in Xara would be possible.

Thanks for any feedback.

Welcome to TalkGraphics

The nice thing about Xara Web Designer or Xara Designer 6 Pro is you do not need to worry about stuff like this. I am sure that others will disagree. But I would rather design the site I want to design and not worry about the behinds the scene stuff.

On the other hand, 50 pages is a lot of pages to manage. I find Xara's Page and Layer Gallery a little unwieldy for such a large site. But then I really do not build many really big sites. So Designer Pro 6 is fine for me.

I edited your post and removed the link to your business site. Please refer to the rules on this page http://talkgraphics.com/showpost.php...24&postcount=2

Hi Jpdp and welcome to Talk Graphics.

I run a website for my club (see my signature) that has about 35+ pages in it. Is a site this large slightly unwieldy? Sure, but not overly so (IMO). Would it be any more unwieldy if I were to add another 15 pages? Not really (again IMO). Just to be clear, what I mean by unwieldy is that I can't always find the page that I am looking for within 1 or 2 seconds, sometimes it takes me 5-10 seconds to find the page.

It all depends on your point of view and how often you have to make changes. I only make occasional changes to the club's website but even then, I don't really have any problems finding the page and making the changes.

I would suggest that you give it a try and form your own opinion.

Just my two cents.
Eric

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jpdp

Why use a CMS?

1. You may want to change the look of the site, but keep the content the same
2. Many users are updating the site on a regular basis
3. You want to publish information which will expire on a certain date
4. You need a search engine on the site

Why not use a CMS?

1. The setup of the template is complex, time consuming and restrictive
2. You need to constantly upgrade the CMS software, or you get behind
3. When you want to make a change to one page, you might find it hard to do
4. Changing the template can be hit and miss

---

You could always go hybrid - use Xara to build a website because of ease of use and powerful graphics capability. Then if you need to add CMS capabilities at some point you can easily add a product like PowerCMS from Webassist to answer some of the needs above (1-4). This also solves the problems 5-8 (maybe not 6). SEO should not be an issue.

Thanks for the replies.
It seems that I go through this every couple of years, when the last CMS has caused me grief.
I probably will give it a go with Xara, as it is so easy to generate pages and then I may use a CMS (I might keep our Joomla system) just to manage it all.