Best CMS for web developers to learn in 2021

A Content Management System (CMS) works as a platform to help users publish and manage content on the web in the easiest manner. Unlike what people usually think, CMSs are not meant for blogging only. You can create blogs, news sites, tutorial websites, and portfolios or even tackle advanced projects such as online stores and private membership sites. Besides publishing content directly to a website, you can alter, format, and index the content as well. In this article we explore best cms for web developers to learn in 2021.

The perk of CMS is that it saves the user from the strenuous task of complex coding and programming. Mastering the best CMS has become crucial for web developers if they want to boost their careers. A CMS facilitates web developers in a myriad of ways. CMS can make it easy for the developer to overcome the difficulty it takes to understand another platform’s coding from serving as a backend to manage and storing content to acting as an API for delivering the content anywhere.

Choosing the best CMS for developers could be daunting as every CMS is designed to cater to certain requirements. Some CMSs go well with e-commerce, and others might be appropriate for designing a simple dynamic website. For web developers, it gives the flexibility to create innovative solutions to problems, so it is easy to spend more time coding.

CMS: One-Stop Solution for Web Developers 

An ideal CMS should possess the following features depending on the type of the project.

• A powerful editor: A good CMS should have a powerful editor with advanced options to create eye-catching content.
• Organization of the content: It should have options to create categories and assigning tags to the content.
• Page editing: Your CMS should have enough tools to create a variety of pages for the website.
• Highly customizable: The best CMS platforms are highly customizable.
• Data portability: It provides you with useful data portability to export your data easily.

Best CMS for web developers to learn

Let’s discuss some of the best CMS for developers to learn.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS platforms that was launched in 2003. Till now, it powers around 30 -35 % of websites on the internet. The PHP and MySQL based CMS provides you with tools to create a feature-packed blog or website using videos, images, and written content.

Do not confuse wordpress.org with wordpress.com. The former is a CMS designed for blogging, and the latter is a blog hosting platform. You can easily download the software from wordpress.org or get a hosting and domain with WordPress. It is simply the best CMS for website development.

Pros

• WordPress CMS is highly flexible. It gives you full freedom to build any website like an online store, auction, or membership website.
• It does not require any prior knowledge of coding or technical skill. It is equally beneficial for both the beginner and the developer.
• It is a perfect software for search engine optimization for creating SEO-friendly URLs, tags, and categories. You can also choose from various SEO plugins to experiment with more possibilities.
• In WordPress, you can download your content in XML format. This means that if you want, you can move it to a different system easily.
• Most giant plugin and theme source.
• Extremely secure platform.

Cons

• If you want to set up your host and domain, you have to manage certain things as backups and security.
• Mixing and matching a lot of plugins could sometimes be a challenging task for a beginner.
• Frequent themes and plugins updates.
• It might be a little vulnerable to hackers as WordPress CMS is open-source.

Learning Resources

Here are two WordPress courses for developers at Udemy.

Joomla

Joomla is another most popular CMS after WordPress. It is generally believed that Joomla is less beginner-friendly and more developer-friendly. It is best–suited for a membership-based site that is more about user management.

Pros

• Joomla CMS includes multilingual support, so you do not need to use extensions or plugins to add more languages to the site.
• Offer great front-end customization.
• It enables you to apply multiple themes and templates at a time for different content and page.
• Joomla provides you with plenty of options and lots of flexibility.
• For Joomla, active community support is available in case of some problem.
• In Joomla, certain extensions are available if you want to run an e-commerce store.
• Receives regular updates.
• Effortless to use interface.

Cons

• Joomla CMS is not beginner-friendly, so it would demand some effort on your part if you want to master it.
• You may not probably find all features you desire on Joomla and may need to do some work manually.
• Not very SEO-friendly compared to other platforms.

Learning Resources for Best CMS for web developers

Drupal

Drupal is an open-source CMS for developers who desire to build a customized site to manage massive data like The Economist’s site or any university site. It provides you with reasonable control over users and their permissions.

Pros

• A built-in system makes user management super easy for you.
• You can easily add and manage content on Drupal CMS, thanks to its flexibility and plenty of options.
• Just like WordPress plugins, you can add different available modules to the sites.
• It has a powerful taxonomy system to organize huge data.
• It offers excellent security.
• Excellent CMS option for high traffic websites.

Cons

• It is less beginner-friendly as compared to WordPress and more suitable for individuals with web development experience.
• Not preferred for blogs or publications.

Learning Resources

Magento

The leading software company Adobe has designed this open-source CMS as an e-commerce platform. Big names like Nike, Coca-Cola, and Ford use Magento CMS.

The powerful and flexible core features by Magento help the developers in maintaining good control over the functionality of e-commerce stores.  Nowadays, companies have a team of developers to deal with the Magento CMS to perform two different kinds of tasks.

• Front-end Magento Developers: Their job is to build themes to make e-commerce websites user-friendly, responsive to devices, and look great.
• Back-end Magento Developers: These developers work on adding in extensions and codes to support the Magento platform.

Pros

• Plenty of third-party extensions with additional features make this software highly customizable.
• Super user-friendly CMS and easy to work with.
• Highly scalable and is designed to facilitate large-scale apps scalability.

Cons

• Support is quite expensive.
• Only works with dedicated hosting.
• A bit slower than other available platforms.

Learning Resources for Best CMS for web developers

Opencart

Opencart is open-source, so it is easy for PHP developers to add their own updates. The CMS can cater to many languages. As a well-featured PHP, the platform has an excellent scope for developers willing to create featured and comprehensive online stores.

Pros

• Opencart CMS provides abundant themes, modules, and extensions.
• It makes it easy for developers to set up sites using different managers.
• Very easy to set up and use.
• High functionality for multilingual sites.

Cons

• Sometimes it slows down when there is a quick spike in web traffic. Keep it in mind when learning the platform.
• Customization is a bit technical.
• Less SEO-friendly.
• You cannot program tasks from the modules as the event system is absent.

Learning Resources

Woo-Commerce

Woo commerce is another e-commerce platform. Technically you cannot call it a CMS platform; rather, it works as a WordPress plugin. Firstly, you have to download WordPress to install Woocommerce. It is easy to handle and is really flexible. 5.8% of the websites in the world use this platform.

Pros

• WooCommerce provides you with plenty of themes to manage the site according to your desire.
• WooCommerce, with its multiple available extensions (WooCommerce plugins), allows you to add extra functionality to a site.
• The taxonomy system enables you to maintain a record of stock.

Cons

• A myriad of options could sometimes baffle the beginners.

Learning Resources

Shopify

Shopify is another most popular CMS platform, which is more of an e-commerce platform. Th service is being used by millions of people worldwide and provides an excellent opportunity for developers to make handsome money using the e-commerce CMS.

Pros

• Shopify’s active support is available 24/7 through email, phone, Twitter, and live chat and also in the form of online written information.
• Custom storefront development allows creating unique shopping experiences on the web, mobile, and in-game.
• Extensions allow for a more seamless experience.
• Shopify Admin API allows you to get started quickly with 50+ endpoints.
• Tons of customization options
• Hosting included.

Cons

• Not very customizable.
• Does not support content like video, carousels, etc.

Learning Resources

Chamilo

Chamilo is a unique open-source PHP CMS also based on MySQL, and it is geared towards learning platform type. In fact, it is a learning management system, LMS, a kind of CMS. Chamilo helps you to create online courses.

Pros

• User-friendly and easy to use with straightforward content and data management. Minimal learning curve and zero programming knowledge is required.

Cons

• Extendibility is inadequate as it lacks extensions or plugins and requires custom programming for extension.
• Limited support.

Learning Resources

Typo3

Typo3 comes as an open-source CMS platform for web content management that is written in PHP. The system is released under the General Public License. It runs on different web servers like Apache, IIS, or Nginx and top running operating systems including Linux.

Pros

• It is better to learn for making enterprise-level sites.
• The system contains support for multilingual sites.
• Allows easy access to data and tools on the website.
• You can manage different websites with a single installation.
• Large community.
• High flexibility with various functions.

Cons

• It takes quite some time to understand it thoroughly.
• The configuration is quite tricky.
• Non-expert training is not available easily.

Learning Resources

Craft CMS

Craft is another PHP CMS. You can call it developer-centric CMS because it gives them unlimited scope to create their own front-ends. It requires a sound knowledge of HTML and CSS. However, its clean backends make it easy for the content editors to find their required features to publish the content.

Pros

• It is highly functional and offers commercial features.
• Craft CMS boosts effective security.
• It is lightweight and offers excellent performance.

Cons

• It is not open-source.
• There are not many plugins available for Craft.

Pyro CMS

Pyro CMS is a PHP platform powered by the Laravel framework. The CMSs intuitive backend design and modular architecture add to its popularity. It proves a great scope for developers to innovatively experiment with the right components to fulfil the sites’ requirements. It is flexible for customization.

Pros

• Fully customized CMS can be easily adapted to any project.
• The PHP CMS is compatible and fully integrable with many third-party extensions.
• Effortless setup and installation using few commands.

Cons

• Strong coupling to the Laravel framework may restrict options.

Summary

These were some of the best CMS  for web developers to learn in the IT and tech industry. We hope this article helped you gain insight into what’s relevant in the market, the pros and cons of certain platforms, and how much they cost to learn.

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