Now, back to our regularly scheduled posts…

We’ll use WordPress as our example. Don’t get me wrong, WordPress is great for the purpose it’s designed for – to be a Blog platform with some static content added on. It’s true that we can make WordPress work for nearly any type of site, by combining plugins, custom fields, and a bit of php. This works ok until you really need to setup something more complex, with several types of content, all requiring custom fields. Pretty soon you’ll have a long list of custom fields to choose from. It gets tough to remember which field goes with which content type, which fields are required for this but not that, and so on.

This is where Symphony CMS really shines. The basic idea of Symphony is that you first model your data types. So, if you have the following data types: blog posts, gallery images, dealer locations, and latest deals – you will setup a data model for each of these. You also design the url structure and have complete control over the output of the data via templates. This kind of power allows you to build a very robust system much easier than by using custom development.

(Screenshot of the Symphony Admin)

Now, a word of warning – Symphony CMS is a bit complex to understand, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have all the power you need to build incredible websites.

You can checkout Symphony here. Be sure to read about Symphony’s features and the beginner’s guide to understanding Symphony. As an added bonus, Symphony is free and open-source. You can’t beat that price!

When you first create a new site, you’re presented with the following screen:

Hovering over the content of the page will bring up the edit button. Once you click edit, you can make changes to the content of your page using Textile markup for formatting.

In the edit screen, there’s a handy sidebar of Textile shortcuts that pops up. Clicking one of these shortcuts will insert that tag into your content. Adding headings, lists, links, or form elements is as simple as clicking a shortcut. Once I saved the page shown above, I can see all my changes:

You can also attach comments or files to a page, making it easy to work with your clients on building their site.

Jumpchart also supports a couple more really cool features:

• Create pages and sub-pages. You can drag and drop the page order in the sidebar.
• Wireframe and Sitemap views – view your content in a basic wireframe format or view a Sitemap of the pages you’ve created.
• Export – you can export to html/css or to Wordpress format. This is a huge time-saver if you’re setting up a bunch of content pages.

What makes Jumpchart worth taking a look? In my experience clients often have trouble visualizing a website during the design and planning phase. If you’re able to start building the content early in the process, it makes it easier to engage the client in the planning of their website. I’ve also found that being able to look at the content for the site often helps during the design phase as well. Plus with the ability to export to html/css or Wordpress, you can easily transition the work you’ve done during planning to the build phase. Check out Jumpchart at jumpchart.com.

Personally, I’d highly recommend checking out Magento on that list. I would also add 2 more, the hosted solution Shopify, and the PHP/MySQL solution CS-Cart. We used CS-Cart on an internal company project a few years ago and it worked quite well. As always, try out a solution before deciding which to use.

It has a list of all the WP template tags that you might need for setting up or modifying a theme. I refer to it constantly when working with WordPress.

Looks like the perfect sketch pad for wireframing. If you’ve tried this or if you know of other great sketch pads for designers, let us know!