I just read a blog post on B2B-TECHCOPY TECHNOLOGY MARKETING BLOG entitled "Joomla, Woodpress and Drupal" by Randy Lewiskemp and it motivated me to share a quick word on the best software tool to use when building your website.

The answer is - it depends!

I've come to the realization that Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc. - as powerful as they are - are really unnecessary and expensive (cost, time) at most and at the very least the majority of business websites (or blogs) can get the same job done with a simpler cheaper (time, money) tool. Don't get me wrong these are incredible, multipurpose, tools but...if used inappropriately can cost you more time and money than you bargained for.

I've used Joomla, started learning Drupal and gave up on WordPress but when I stopped to review what I really needed versus trying to use the most popular solutions I found that I didn't need them at all for any of my websites.

In essence these are content management systems (CMS) on steroids and if all a website requires is CMS and blogging capabilities and maybe a sprinkle of HTML and JavaScript, then there are less complicated applications out there.

Let's face it, most start-ups and small businesses just need a professional looking website and blog not a professional looking website and blog built on Joomla, Drupal or WordPress.

I've been using SquareSpace, Weebly and more recently LightCMS (still evaluating). They were cheap (cost, time), easy to use and I was able to get several very professional looking websites up and running in no time. As I also wear a software engineer's hat I was able to take advantage of some of their more "advanced" features.

I suppose it was the ease of use and incredible customer support that got me sold on these JDWE alternatives. SquareSpace for one has the BEST online customer service e-v-e-r. 24/ 7 email support never looked this good. I'm not going to review these tools here (maybe later) but they are worth checking out. Have you used any great JDWE alternatives lately?

Just so no one feels bad, if you are already an expert in JDWE, then by all means, stick with what you know and get the job done. After all in most cases...

"It's not that a thing is confusing and therefore you don't understand - it's that you don't understand and therefore it seems confusing." - me

I have a theory, if you have low resources and need to use a web tool, first determine if there are a lot of jobs for "experts" of the the tool. If there are, then the tool is probably going to be too complicated for you to use and you will end up having to hire someone to do something you could have done yourself. I wonder if I can come up with an equation for this theory :)