setting up two CMS for one site, best practice

Question

I am currently developing a (somewhat large) site for a magazine, the site mainly consists of sections like : news (for various categories), members, and some 'other stuff' (like shoutbox, polls, previous covers, photo galleries that can be tagged, and ad banners system).

Now, since most part of the site is a typical blog style (single-post page), I'm thinking of using Wordpress as the main engine because of its powerful backend with a good (easy to use ?) WYSIWYG editor, nice page organization, media handling, and lots of other features. Naturally that leaves me with the 'other stuff'. (banner management, photo tags management, etc.)

The easiest way (well, I think) was to set up another CMS (let's call it CMS2), to handle all those things that would be impossible or probably difficult to integrate into WP admin, and then trying to cope everything in the frontend, WP style.

My questions :

1. Is it good (normal) for a site to have two (or more) CMS behind it ?
2. What could possibly go wrong ? (or perhaps, is there anything I should know beforehand with this kind of approach ?)
3. The other alternative would be to look for another good, single way to handle everything. But the main problem now is to find a CMS powerful and flexible enough for those. What framework / CMS is the most appropriate for this (according to you) ?
4. Other alternative ?

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I think its too complicated and that problems are likely to arise around the fact there are two systems. Its also not great from a usability perspective.

You should look at some of the beefier CMS options. Drupal has a lot of plugins and functionality available, be suprised if it can't do what you need. Joomla is also worth a look, as is CMS Made Simple (CMSMS).

Answer 2

It could be a good idea to use WordPress, depending on the features you want in your blogs. Drupal has a 'blog' feature, but it's a bit limited. (For example, people can't leave comments using OpenID like they can in Word Press - although I haven't used Drupal in 6 months or so, it might have changed. For an example of Drupal blogs, take a look at this drupal site ).

Drupal still has the easy to use WYSIWYG editor you mentioned, and has different types of posts (for example, you could just post an image, post an article, post a blog post, etc. When you create them, you can choose to publish them to the front page, or just to their category (depending on how you configure the site, it's pretty flexible).

So, if that's enough for you it will be alot simpler to manage!

Answer 3

Honestly I think it's a pretty bad idea, at least on the background of my own experience.

The main disadvantages:

• doubles the amount of knowledge an admin/editor has to have/develop
• doubles the amount of security risks
• doubles the amount of updating/patching the CMS installations
• lowers the probability of finding a replacement for you
• it makes SEO related tasks more difficult
• it makes development more difficult if features of the two sites are supposed to interact
• it makes interaction between features of the two sites difficult or impossible (due to the restrictions of the CMS)

What would that second CMS be anyways? If it is a site with the dimensions you described, why not using a real CMS? Both Drupal and Joomla can handle all of the requirements you describe!

Take some time to evaluate, which one to choose and go for one CMS!