QUESTION (Honest) Thoughts for a website conversion

[jwzumwalt]

Hi,
I'm currently thinking of changing CMS for my website. [url=http://hepato-neuro.ca][/url]

I just converted to GS about six weeks ago and can share a few observations.
I did 3-4 trials and made corrections for standards along the way. GS is not complicated or hard to work with but it does have a personality. I found a couple plugins that seemed to conflict but I'll get to that in a bit.

I spent 80% of my time getting my theme the way I wanted; I probably spent 2-3 days then tweaked it over time - maybe another day or two total time. I did consider writing a PHP program to convert HTML pages to ruff draft GS XML. After much consideration I decided extensive re-edit was going to be needed anyway and opted to cut and past. After finishing the conversion I am comfortable with the decision I made.

There were 5-6 things that really were not a good fit. When I would leave a post on this forum, I found the solution was easy but sometimes I was too vague to explain the issue correctly. Anyway, I don't think it ever took more than a day or two for a satisfactory solution. Of the 5-6 issues only two were really significant and two members wrote custom plugins to accommodate what I needed - hows that for SUPPORT!

(shawn_a above was quite often the first to respond within 2-3 hours and ALWAYS followed the issue until I was satisfied)

To recap, my site was quite unusual and so my needs certainly were more unique than most folks would need. The support was immediate and just what I needed. If I were not a programmer, I don't think I would be as tickled about my experience but it sounds like you are not a neophyte and I think you will be extremely pleased.

GS itself has never crashed. I have had plugins appear to crash the thing but after a while I learned what was causing the problem and how to avoid it or I got rid of the plugin. I would suggest a couple dry runs and load ALL the plugins you think you will need. I eventually loaded them incrementally about 5 at a time and sorted out the bad ones. I use about 20-25 plugins.