There has been a subtle shift in web design software that has been slow, gradual and permanent shift that I have not heard anyone talk about. This is the change from stick built web sites to content management systems. I think as time goes on there will be fewer and fewer web sites made from the ground up.

Stick Built Web Sites

Stick built web sites are ones that you make yourself from scratch. I am old enough to remember when cake mixes were a new thing. Now no one would think of making a cake from scratch. Same with houses it used to be that all components of a house were also built on the spot, they were called stick built. The bad part of this is that each person has to keep reinventing the wheel on each job site. Stick built web sites have every line of code written just for that web site.

Content Management Systems

Content management systems (CMS) are great because much of the work in creating a web site is already done for you. Unless you use it just as it comes from the box you need just as many skills; and quite a few more plus you just get a much better product. CMS’s are great since each person builds on all of the skills of the people that have went before him. Content management systems are usually open source applications so they are the results many peoples teamwork. This is why you get a much better product.

Some of the better-known CMSs are Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla 1.5, Joomla, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, TYPO3, Xoops

Some of the better-known blogs are b2evolution, Nucleus, WordPress

This web site (http://www.dashaver.com/) is a Drupal web site

Familiar Drupal web sites

http://research.nokia.com/

http://www.virginradio999.com/

http://www.symantec.com/community/

http://performancing.com

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Familiar WordPress Blogs

http://www.johnchow.com/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

http://www.chrisg.com/

Leave your opinion below; do you think most big corporate web sites will always be stick built?