Open-source software is indeed a wonderful thing. We use it every day, and often recommend it.

But it's not always the best solution.

Here at SiteStrux, we program our own proprietary CMS solution. It works great for us- we know it inside and out, and can easily customize it to do whatever we want and offer the support our clients need.

There are many open-source CMS programs out there. Most of them are fine products, but they are simply not the best solution for every website scenario:

• Your can find yourself restrained to the functionality of the CMS without many options.
• You will often be at the mercy of 3rd party plug-ins to implement any out-of-the-box functionality.
• Support is uneven and decentralized.

One of the biggest challenges with many of the "boxed" content management solutions is the ability to quickly and efficiently develop "micro custom" solutions. A micro custom solution is is when a client needs something that's completely unique to their situation.

There won't be a magical plug-in available because it's so personalized that no general solution would work. So you need to provide a completely custom solution for the client's very specific needs.

For example, the Fulton Opera House (http://www.thefulton.org) wanted to add different sponsor logos at the bottom of every page. Ok, that's not so custom, right? But the trick was that different sponsors needed to appear on different pages using some complex rules.

Fortunately we were able to easily modify our CMS to handle this. We created a simple "map" to tie an image gallery of sponsors to the page being displayed that could be updated by Fulton staff.

Having that ability to easily implement micro-custom solutions is a big plus for proprietary solutions. Since we use our own CMS, we love micro-custom solutions (no suprise, huh?). It allows us to give our clients exactly what they need, and it helps differentiate us from other web agencies.

This simply wouldn't be nearly as possible with open-source software.