A Content Management System (CMS) is a software package that facilitates authoring and user interaction, and provides administrative tools to allow you to manage and manipulate the content on your website.

A CMS handles all dynamic interaction from adding a blog post, to storing your customers details in your database, to filtering and displaying comments from the public attached to certain pieces of content on your site.

Although it is possible to build your CMS from scratch, for larger sites it is often best to choose one of the "big three" CMS' - Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla!

If you have a small site that only needs the ability to make a few tweaks (changing a single image, modifying your contact address), then we'll probably just make you up something from scratch. Using one of the "big three" in this situation is probably going to be overkill.

Alternatively if you need a massive site with unique requirements we're well versed in MVC frameworks such as Symfony and Zend. Get in touch with us to talk about which solution would be best for your business.

Drupal, the grandfather of web CMS', is our first choice for the majority of websites that we produce. It is by far the most solid, modular, and flexible CMS out there at the moment, and it does a ridiculous amount of fancy things behind closed curtains that are so technical they'd literally blow your mind if we told you about them.

Drupal is the right choice for you if you're looking to manage content in a way that is specific to your business, it's perfect for e-commerce, corporate intranets, and social based websites, just to name a few.

Drupal allows you to plug in extra functionality where you need it, functionality such as an online store, a blog or an interactive forum are simple to activate and you only pay us to tailor this functionality to your specific needs (you don't pay us to build it from the ground up).

For more information on Drupal click here to read our little expose on the topic, or have a look through the wealth of information on the Drupal homepage. Alternatively, get in contact with us to discuss what Drupal can do for you and how it can help you achieve your business goals.

Wordpress is a popular blogging platform that is quickly gaining momentum as multi-featured CMS software package. This is a great choice for bloggers and niche businesses that need to keep their customers informed with up to date information.

Wordpress is still primarily a blogging platform, so if you're looking to manage content in a style other than the chronological blogging format you might want to consider Drupal.

Having said that, Lab Fiftyfive has been working with Wordpress for the past three years and have watched it grow from a simple blogging platform to a multi-feature CMS. We're extremely well versed in building templates and plugins and are confident that we can produce whatever you might need with this handy software package. Get in contact with us to see if Wordpress is right for you.

Joomla! is another top tier modular CMS, and a solid choice for a wide range of applications.

Although not as malleable as Drupal, Joomla boasts an easy to use administration interface and a wide number of community contributed modules.

The Lab Fiftyfive team is fully versed in the inner working of Joomla and are ready hack away at your existing Joomla website or start something fresh. Get in contact with us to see how we can help with your Joomla needs.