WordPress Vs Squarespace- A 2020 Comparison

More than 60 million people in the world use CMS to run their websites. There are hundreds of CMS available but the one is becoming increasingly popular and used by many people all around the world. So which one is that- WordPress or Squarespace? How to decide which platform to use and why? Before we dive into the comparison, ask a few questions to yourself. 

• What is the purpose of the website that you want to build?
• Is it a complex web app or a simple web presentation?
• Are you building an ecommerce website or do you want to sell your services online?
• Are you developing a website on your own or hiring professional developers?
• Do you want to work around search engine optimization?
• Are you tech savvy?

Now you have a starting point. Let’s see some basics of both the CMS, wordpress and squarespace before we start comparison.

What Is WordPress?

Released in 2003, WordPress is a free open-source content management system(CMS) that is used to build websites and web applications. It’s open source, meaning that the code behind it is freely available and may be modified easily. Now more than 33% of top 10 million web locations are based on WordPress(WP). Websites built with WordPress can be customised to a very large degree — it’s an extremely flexible tool that, in the hands of the right development team, or through the installation of a suitable plugin, can be adapted to meet the requirements of just about any website design project. WP is based on HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript and it supports a lot of technical features. 

What Is Squarespace?

Launched in 2003, Squarespace is an all-in one website builder with its own CMS. As Squarespace is a cloud service, there is no need to download any software. We call it an all-in-one solution because with just a subscription fee, it provides customizable and responsive website templates, hosting service, domain name, SSL certificate, and 24/7 customer service. Recently, a built-in email marketing tool, ‘Squarespace Email Campaigns’ was also added to the feature’s list. The main idea behind Squarespace is- it’s a ‘code-free’ solution that makes it possible to build and edit a website without needing to go near any CSS or HTML.

WordPress Vs Squarespace- A Comparison

1. Ease of use-

WordPress has an interactive interface with an easy to use dashboard. If you are familiar with HTML, CSS and PHP, it is easier for you. It just requires a basic knowledge of these programming languages and style sheets to build a website on your own. WordPress will be a better solution for multilingual sites. 

As Squarespace is a website builder, you can pick, switch, and personalize your templates using drag-and-drop.  You can choose an element like a text box, drag it to where you need it and drop- and that’s exactly how it will look once your page is published. It is called as WYSIWYG editing means “What You See is What You Get,”. This makes it easy to make changes because you’re seeing everything right in front of you, exactly how visitors to your site will be seeing it once it’s live.

2. Themes and Templates-

WordPress is based on a customizable theme and also follows a plugin architecture. Thousands of WP themes are available and are free and paid too. Nearly 55000 plugins are available for all kinds of modifications and extra functionalities. If you have hands-on experience in HTML, CAA, JS and PHP, you can use WordPress themes for your website and customize whatever you need. Within themes,there comes a template hierarchy.

Squarespace is also based on customizable templates. There are more than 100 templates available to choose and these templates are grouped according to the similar functionalities and features. Depending on the purpose of the website you will get the recommended templates that give you an easy start. You can start with one template and then switch to a different one later on. But the switching is not that much of an easy process because of the differences between templates and features, however it is possible.

3. Ecommerce-

WordPress has various options for setting up an online store.  The most highly recommended is the plugin WooCommerce. One can create a powerful online store with WooCommerce. It is specially designed for WordPress users to help them sell online. As it was built for WordPress, you don’t need to worry about its compatibility for your website. It is free and also easy to install.  Woocommerce includes inventory management, hundreds of themes, payment and shipping options etc. Due to the customization available with woocommerce, you can align your branding, sell whatever products you want and also can integrate ecommerce with powerful blogging tools.

Squarespace gives you everything that you need to start online selling. All sales tools of squarespace are fully integrated, meaning that the online store will look seamless and professional. It’s business plan is designed for small stores and charges 3% transaction fee on each sale you make. There is a provision to create promotional pop-ups, sell unlimited products and have a professional email and so on. The upgraded ecommerce plan includes advanced ecommerce features like- 0% transaction fees, inventory, orders, tax and coupons, label printing, product listings on instagram, gift cards, cart recovery etc.

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/wordpress-vs-squarespace-a-2020-comparison/

7 Steps To Choose Best CMS For Your Website

 

Having a business without a website is just the same as you don’t exist and this is a reality for a long while now. However if you have a small to medium-sized company, the chances are you probably do not have resources for an IT department to work on your website throughout the entire year. In such cases, you should employ a website development company to design and develop a website for you. When you hire one, they would likely ask you to choose a custom website and a Content Management System (CMS). CMS offers a lot of benefits and the biggest one is no need to worry about how to code. There are too many different CMS in the market. So how to choose the best one? Don’t worry, we’ve come with a list of things to consider while selecting the best CMS for your website. Before digging into it, have a look at, why use CMS?

Why Use CMS?

1. User-friendly Content Composition- 

Content management systems offers simple and easy to use content composition and media upload tools with simple formatting controls to build attractive layouts. Most provide the ability to preview work and save drafts.

2. Accessible Content Management- 

If you use CMS, you don’t need a knowledge of HTML to edit a website. As there is a provision of editing tools, there is very little to learn. Some CMSs include complex layout editors that give WYSIWYG composition, or let you edit page content in a live view.

3. Rapid And Fast Edits-

A CMS allows you to access the contents of a database over the web. Generally, you’ll use a form, although some CMS software allows you to directly edit the page contents in live preview.

4. Safe Interaction With Database-

The CMS helps with checking accidental edits by controlling the manner in which you save and create your content. This can help to stop you from messing up the database, as you don’t interact directly with it. Some CMSs don’t use databases but this is rare.

5. Automation-

The CMS can automate some aspects of content delivery, like the production of a RSS feed from content that you create. It can also schedule posts for a future date, so you can stack up content in advance instead of publishing it immediately, and feed into your social media accounts, ecommerce store and so on.

6. Flexibility- 

Numerous CMSs have well-established user communities that extend their reach and usefulness using extensions or plugins. As the design and layout is separate, it is easy to “reskin” the site by plugging in a new theme without disturbing the content. Some CMSs have built-in forum and email marketing tools.

How To Choose A CMS For Your Website?

There are hundreds of content management systems like Magento, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Wix and so on. Before selecting any CMS, you should ask yourself a few questions like- your budget, security options, support and exactly what you need in a website etc. Complexity is another issue, if you run a shop with thousands of products, you should go for a proven ecommerce platform like WooCommerce or Magento. Whereas, if you are a startup or a small company that offers one or two services, you can just start with one page website. Here we’ll discuss some of the important points that should be considered before you select the best one for your website.

1. Ease Of Use-

For a non-technical person, ease of use is the most important thing to think about CMS. If you want to manually upload content, you will have to do it by yourself, whether you want it or not. There are some things that you need to learn and if the platform is easier to use, it is better for your staff members to access. These days, most of the web platforms are easy to use or navigate, so it is easy to add new pages, images and other content onto your website or blog. WordPress is a popular CMS for web development.  

2. Core Functionality-

One of the most common misconceptions is- all the CMS platforms perform the same functionality like create, edit and organize pages and content. Although it is true at basic level, there is a range of functionality that only few systems can support, for example, eCommerce, event ticketing, multilingual support, multiple website support, and so on. In spite of the popular belief, unused functionality isn’t excess power, its excess weight slows down and makes your system unnecessarily cumbersome. Making a conclusive list of what you need and what you don’t require from your CMS and making provisions for future requirements will help you to make the right decision.

3. Initial Set-up & Deployment-

Although open source CMSs might be available free of licensing costs that saves your money, the framework still needs to be installed and configured to your needs and basically run somewhere. Generally optimizing and configuring CMSs for production use is a complex task. If you have the hosting facility as well as the necessary technical skills, then you can do this without anyone’s help. If not, the most secure option in many cases is using a dedicated vendor to deal with this.

4. Security-

When we hear about selling valuable personal information, online security has become important. So it is important to have a hacker-proof CMS that can resist other types of cybercriminal and for this you have to do detailed research. Today, most of the modern content management are en route to improving their online security. As we have already mentioned, wordpress is the most widely used CMS that has done a lot of improvements over the years. Magento is the best platform for ecommerce according to the SEO point of view.

5. Blogging-

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/7-steps-to-choose-best-cms-for-your-website/

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal: The real difference

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When you are thinking to build a website using a content management system, then which platform should be used is very important decision. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are ahead in the race of platforms to build a website. All three are open-source and so free to use. Together they acquire about 71% of the CMS Market. WordPress, Joomla and Joomla all three CMS software were introduced in the early first decade of the 21st century. These three allows you to build and manage websites without being a web developer. In comparison debate of these three, each one of them tried to prove them best. But they still have their own pros and cons. In this blog, we will compare WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal to based on features, performance, security and also popularity. 

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal to based on features

1.Popularity-

• WordPress- Principle technology of WordPress in background is PHP with SQL database. It shares a market about 60% and increasing continuously. WordPress crossed 30% threshold for overall usage. Near about 560 million websites run on WordPress and this makes WordPress the rapidly growing CMS of last decade.
• Joomla- Joomla is the second most famous CMS on the web. Market share of Joomla on CMS market is about 6.3%. About 3.1% of all websites on interest works on it, which means about 58 million websites. Joomla is based on PHP and SQL database. It has been downloaded more than 93 million times.
• Drupal- First version of Drupal released in 2001 and now it is the third most popular platform for building websites. The main principle of Drupal is PHP and it is also open- source and community run software. Overall market share of Drupal is 2.2%, which means about 41 million websites are running with Drupal platform. It is the most technically advanced CMS.

2. Installation and ease of use-

• WordPress- WordPress comes with a famous five minute install. Most of the host providers offer one click install of WordPress. Main principle technology of WordPress is PHP with SQL database. Setup is snappy and simple.The user experience of WordPress after installation is superior than Joomla or Drupal. For complex layouts, page builders are used in WordPress. These allows beginners to create and change the appearance of pages with graphic interface instead of coding. The user can see a simple user interface with menus to create posts or start customizing appearance. All these makes WordPress simple to teach WordPress to clients.
• Joomla- Installation of Joomla is not as fast as WordPress. After installation user came to the control panel that is not easy as that of WordPress. In account of complexity Joomla is in between WordPress and Drupal. There will be more menus to click on and customize a site, so this makes it more powerful than WordPress. It offers more functionality than that of WordPress but it is more complex.
• Drupal- Installation of Drupal is similar to Joomla and WordPress. Just download and upload package and run installation script. Drupal is famous for its flexibility and this spoils its simplicity. It is mainly focused on developers, not beginners. Drupal is difficult as compared to others. It is most technically advanced platform. It requires working knowledge of PHP, HTML and other programming languages to make a successful changes. The post installation experience for absolute beginners is a bit complicated.

3. Cost and Expenses-

Important factor in building a website is how much it will cost to build. As all the above systems in our CMS comparison are open source and free to use but sometimes building a website comes with expenses though your CMS is free.

• WordPress- The additional cost will require due to premium plugins,themes and extensions in wordpress. Next cost factor is professional help that might be required to implement complex things in your site. Because of its popularity these services are easily available and affordable. WordPress is a great option to build a website in a cheap rate.
• Joomla- Cost required to run a Joomla site is similar to that of WordPress. It is free but has some premium  templates and extensions. Prices are at the same range as that of WordPress
• Drupal- It is made for fast performance. You may need some premium themes whose cost is same as that of the other two platforms. Drupal is not for the beginners. If you are not a developer and want to build a site, you have to pay someone. So the development costs should be considered in your budget.

4. Themes-

• WordPress- There are 55000 plugins and several thousand themes available to customize your site. Instead of free themes, it also has premium wordpress themes. You can change appearance of site using themes. WordPress can be constructed into any type of website you want to.
• Joomla- Joomla also has templates and extensions. There are many extensions available for creation of an e-commerce store to manage email. It does not have more templates as that of WordPress. As a result, it is difficult to find an appropriate template and extension that meets your requirements. Some extensions are paid.
• Drupal- Drupal offers 40,000+ modules and 2600 themes to customize your site. Clients should leave their site, look for the module and theme they want to add, then locate the project’s zip file URL. At last user can enter the URL in modules or themes to install them.

5. Support-

• WordPress- WordPress has strongest community of users. You can get WordPress help on official support forums, docs, handbooks. Slack channels. There are some websites like WPBeginner, having hundreds of tutorials, videos and articles for beginner level user. It has an option for the paid support.
• Joomla- The first address for support is official help portal. Here you can ask questions and get technical support. Community of Joomla is not as big as WordPress. For more support you can join forums, IRC chatrooms, etc.
• Drupal- You can get community support options for Drupal just like WordPress and Joomla. It has dedicated community of fans and users. There is documentation, support forum, mailing lists, user groups, IRC chatrooms. All good places to get advice and free help.

WordPress has the largest community and support options are available.

6. Performance-

• WordPress- Page loading time is an important factor for both visitors and search engines. If your site doesn’t load within a few seconds, it will affect  the number of visitors to your site. The WordPress platform has shown that it can successfully handle sites with thousands of pages and millions of monthly visitors.
• Joomla- Joomla proves its good reputation in terms of performance because it has in-built performance enhancing functionality. It is completely depends on you to select plugins, images etc to load your site quickly.
• Drupal- Drupal produces the fastest- loading websites because it is less resource intensive and demanding server. Due to this support for thousands of pages and visitors is easy. It is more scalable than the other two, which makes it more popular among larger sites.

Final Words-

WordPress is beginner friendly also easy to use. Even though you are not a programmer, you can build a site with it very easily. It has largest number of strong community. It is customizable, secure and also SEO and mobile friendly. While Joomla requires some knowledge of programming languages. If you want to build a site with advanced features and more customization then Drupal should be your choice. It is not suitable for beginners. Finally the result of WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal is based on features, your requirements and budget and level of complexity of website.

Please contact us if you have any Web Development projects. We have got plenty of experience in Web and mobile application Development service.

WordPress- Best Known For Its CMS

Enormously, WordPress has shown its potential features which can CMS in a very flexible manner. In simple terms, a content management system(CMS) allows you to manage your content in a structured environment. Content management system(CMS) stores all of your documents, images, videos and any other type of online content in an organized way, so that you can easily add, retrieve, edit, delete and publish your content quickly and easily. Content management systems(CMS) also allow multiple editors to access, manage and work on the content and publish it under different sections of the site.

Here are some few reasons which suites as best for CMS:

• WordPress Is Open Source and free

Well, for a start, WordPress is completely FREE to use! In fact, you can download the full WordPress software application free of charge, and host it on your own domain without having to pay any software license fees whatsoever. WordPress is an open-source Content management systems(CMS) means no accountability, no support, no updates, no continuity and no guiding light or development path.

• Flexibility

One of the reasons why CMS WordPress has become so popular so quickly is that it requires no technical or programming skills to use or manage. Once WordPress is installed and configured, almost everything else, from using and running it, to redesigning and restructuring it, can be easily managed using simple interfaces and menus that require little to no web skills.
For example, WordPress has a built-in visual editor that allows anyone to create, format and publish content online quickly and professionally just by clicking on a few menu buttons. If you have ever used Microsoft Word, then you would have no problems at all managing your WordPress content.

• Complete Control

With CMS WordPress, you don’t need to spend a great deal of money to have a professional web presence, you don’t need technical skills or programming knowledge to run a website, and you don’t need to depend on webmasters, web developers or web designers to manage your content or your site. Once your WordPress site is up and running, all you need to do is learn how to use all of the powerful features and functions that WordPress makes available, so you can achieve anything that you envision doing with your site.
With WordPress, you can be in complete control of your own web presence.

• Powerful scalability

CMS WordPress provides users with a framework that is extremely flexible and scalable, making it almost infinitely extensible. One of the core principles of the WordPress philosophy apart from developing it as an Open Source project, is to keep the core code as light and fast as possible while providing a rich framework that allows the growing community of WordPress software developers and web designers to keep expanding what WordPress can do with applications that enhance its core functionality (called Plugins) and flexible web design templates (called Themes) that allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your entire website in just a few mouse clicks.

• Maintenance

Generally, free plugins and free themes don’t offer much in the way of support for users. In most cases, this is not a problem, as some of the most popular free plugins and themes are quite robust and their developers do provide regular upgrades to keep up with new CMS WordPress upgrades.

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