A lot of people worry that making a decision to use one website platform over another will restrict them in some way later down the line. Without doubt it's a valid concern, and one that should be researched thoroughly before committing to one option. Whether you end up being restricted or not comes down to specfically which web platform you make use of.

There are vast differences in the quality of design amongst the various website technologies out there. While I am personally an avid advocate for open source technologies, I will concede that there are projects that are not particularly well coded or designed. In particular, I think of osCommerce with it's byzantine code base. It'll probably get the job done, but you're letting yourself in for it if you try and make enhancements, or debug some of its modules - not something I would recommend for the faint of heart.

In distinct counterpoint, there are shining beacons of what open source projects can accomplish, like Drupal. Drupal regularly wins awards and recognition for its outstanding contributions to the Internet. In particular, how it empowers people to take charge of their own web presence. It's not alone, there are a number of close competitors that are also worthy of praise - like Joomla.

Projects like these, which by necessity, come with a large amount of functionality to cater for the most common website requirements, I think, are unfairly criticized for being overkill. Because of their incredible flexibility and power there is definitely a greater learning curve to overcome than the less flexible and far less exciting online blog publishing tools.

It's a pity that this small hurdle seems to discourage many people. However, as of late, there are companies like Site prebuilder and Drupal gardens springing up to alleviate this problem by allowing people to leapfrog over this initial hurdle. By skipping over this learning curve and jumping straight to having an operational website, people can now enjoy the benefits of a proper website without the additional effort.

Even at this stage, people are deterred from taking the plunge and utilizing a good open source CMS for fear that it will in some way limit them - as opposed to having a bespoke website developed. In reality, the situation is in reverse with open source projects providing a platform to take development further.

The way to look at this problem is to think about building a car. A system like Drupal or Joomla, provides the doors, chassis, panels, engine components, seats and so on - everything that a car would need. Designing a website from scratch is like building a car by sitting down and painstakingly designing each component from scratch - it's also unlikely any given individual (or small development team) can match the design quality of a big project like Drupal in all areas of website development.

So, if you want something special, let's say a unique engine, the Drupal car is specifically designed to make it easy for you to jump under the hood and modify or completely remove the engine provided and put in a new one. Since it was the engine that was the unique factor, why have a completely new car designed and built from the ground up? It was always going to need doors and seats so what's the point of rebuilding these just because the engine is unique?

The question everyone should be asking is this:

Is there really a viable alternative to good open source web platforms?