Web Design Business Question

[dredding]

The hypothetic Design Business targets small business professional (doctors, lawyers,etc) looking for a website for their practice. The website will need to include pictures, graphics, a few testimonial videos from happy clients, but mostly content rich with articles, blogs, and compatabile with chat service providers. Have easy content management from both the provider and customer (doctor, lawyer, etc) so as to be frequently updated with articles, blog postings. What software (web editor) would you choose to provide these websites. The software should have a multitude of customizable templates, but also capable of building from scratch. Most importantly, the software needs to allow easy search engine optimization of the website content. Desirable that it will be well supported by the web design communities and company which own it. What do you recommend ?

[falkencreative]

My personal preference would be either Wordpress or ExpressionEngine. Wordpress is free, has a wide user base so there is a lot of support if things go wrong, and a lot of plugins/themes to work with. The downside is that (at least personally) I have found that the admin interface it isn't all that intuitive for first time users. This is especially true on some of the higher end templates, which add a large number of features and often don't provide customization options in a consistent way.

 

Alternately, you might want to look at ExpressionEngine. Yes, ExpressionEngine does cost, but it is a high quality CMS that is user friendly, well supported by the company who makes it, and should give you a lot of options.