Furthermore, we believe that these systems can prove to be catastrophic when built or maintained by unqualified developers, or stretched beyond what they were intended originally to do.
The vast majority of websites on the Internet today are powered by popular off-the-shelf content management systems. This includes WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla on the low end and, on the upper tier, enterprise platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager, Ektron, or Sitecore.
These systems are popular because they make promises of customization, ease of use, security, and more. However, these bloated platforms are slowly killing the Internet of creativity and ingenuity.
Take WordPress for example, which has grown to power almost 27% of the Web. As it has grown, “agencies” and “consultants” have crawled out of the woodwork making promises about how it can solve almost any online technical challenge. Lofty claims have been made, such as “easy-to-implement,” “cutting-edge design,” “enhanced lead generation and user conversion,” all in a “secure and safe environment.”
WordPress websites look like WordPress websites. The smart consumer now knows when a company has actually invested serious resources on a website, as opposed to simply taking a theme off the shelf. No longer do you design an experience and then craft a management solution. Today, you design an experience around a management solution.
Worst of all, the massive number of sites running WordPress today have exposed the Internet to the largest security bubble in the history of the medium as a whole. Without upkeep, WordPress and similar platforms become liabilities, waiting for attacks from automated bots hoping to compromise vulnerable servers. Recent studies suggest up to 70% of WordPress sites are vulnerable. That means, mathematically, that 17.5% of the internet is vulnerable to attack.
We’ve seen this many times: The WordPress client whose site was disabled by a brute force attack on its CMS installation. The non-profit hospital whose Joomla installation was so compromised, they were forced to convert their site into flat HTML files. The Drupal client who was forced into a redesign because their platform version was no longer supported.
The answer is because the community doesn’t know how to work with much else.
Today, website owners have to sift through the muck, trying to figure out if a “web developer” can actually really build anything. Agencies are selling themselves as online experts when they can only put together WordPress, a theme, and a couple of plugins. And when the site is hacked or compromised, they have no idea how to fix it.
WordPress began as a simple blogging platform—even today, the system is still blog-centric. Yet so-called “developers” are using it in ways far beyond what it was initially intended to do. WordPress is now being used for e-commerce and other business scenarios, which is putting personal data and credit card information at risk.
We like to compare the increased reach of WordPress to a financial bubble. And what is the definition of a bubble? “A good or fortunate situation that is isolated from reality or unlikely to last.”
Closed-source software is even more restricting than its open-source counterparts—and much more expensive. In some cases, an installation of the Adobe Experience Manager can level out at nearly two million dollars. $2,000,000—that’s a lot of zeros!
Yet there is significant business to be made from customers who feel a sense of comfort in the fact that another corporation is providing support and guidance along the way, even if the eventual end product is essentially the same that could have been accomplished with a much more cost-effective solution.
The CMS spectrum is confusing and complicated. Do you take the risk on the low end of an insecure platform maintained by a community? Or do you spend significant funds on a closed-source system with almost no real customization capabilities?
A way that lets enterprise customers enjoy open-source technology with a closed-source methodology. A way that guarantees a longer lifespan for your website or application. A way that enables you to create an actual, cutting-edge front-end experience like never before. And to maintain ownership and have fanatical, qualified support.
At this point, we’d already hear groans and statements such as “no way” or “that’s crazy.” This is because marketers, business owners, and content managers have been conditioned to ignore the facts and focus on what they already know—despite all of the negatives. Much like how a financial advisor tries to make everything seem complex and complicated – agencies have a knack of overcomplicating CMS solutions. At the end of the day, a CMS controls content. That means adding, editing, deleting and organizing “stuff”. Everything else is a distraction.
Because of the abundance of installations of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, hackers have created sophisticated bots that attempt to take advantage of security holes as they are discovered. These bots work fast and furiously, and are seeking to gain access to servers for a variety of malicious reasons: to propagate viruses, to send spam emails, or to participate in distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.
And if you don’t believe this is true, think about what Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama all have in common: Websites with significant security requirements that are based on custom-coded management systems.
Furthermore, custom systems can be secured to highly stringent standards much more easily than existing solutions. The result is a secure system that gives the user peace of mind.
A custom CMS can live for a long time as the foundation for your website or application. Yes, technology is always advancing. But in the server world, the software that powers management systems iterates at a much slower pace versus the front-end technology that crafts a user experience.
For that reason, it is possible to have a CMS separate from its user experience, enabling the system to live for much longer as opposed to the off-the-shelf systems. With WordPress, for example, the front-end is highly integrated into the platform. Significant redesigns oftentimes mean new platform installations. This is why the average WordPress site lives for less than 2 years.
This means the platform can be molded to your requirements in any number of ways. Custom administrative user interfaces, custom content management workflows, custom integrations to third-party systems—all are possible without restriction! This is something no system off the shelf can do without significant changes.
Our mission is to liberate you from the limitations and vulnerabilities of these platforms, and to allow you to focus on running the day-to-day operations of your business.
We're happy to help!