Book Image

Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide

By : Nirav Mehta
Book Image

Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide

By: Nirav Mehta

Overview of this book

There are many powerful open source CMSs available to take the pain away from managing a web site. These systems are feature rich, often easy to use, and free. Unfortunately, there are so many choices it's tough to be sure you're choosing the right one. How can you be sure that you are selecting and working with the right tool? This book will guide you through choosing the right CMS for your needs. You can be confident in your choice of CMS for the needs of your project. It will also help you make a start using the CMS, and give you a feel for what it's like to use it ñ even before you install it yourself. Are you bewildered by the many open source CMSs available online? Open source CMSs are the best way to create and manage sophisticated web sites. You can create a site that precisely meets your business goals, and keep the site up to date easily because these systems give you full control over every aspect of your site. Because open source CMSs are free to download, you have a huge amount of choice between the various systems. Yet there are many open source CMSs to choose from, each with unique strengths ñ and occasionally limitations too. Choosing between the bewildering number of options can be tough. Making the wrong choice early on may lead to a lot of wasted work, because you'll have a half-finished site that doesn't meet your initial requirements ñ and needs to be restarted from scratch. This book will show you how to avoid choosing the wrong CMS. It will guide you through assessing your site requirements, and then using that assessment to identify the CMS that will best fit your needs. It contains discussions of the major CMSs, and the issues that you should consider when choosing: their complexity to use, their features and the power they offer. It discusses technical considerations such as programming languages and compliance with best practice standards in a clear, friendly way that non-technical readers can understand. The book also contains quick-start guides and examples for the most popular CMSs such as WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal, so that you can experiment with these CMSs, get a feel for how they work, and start using them to build your site. After reading this book, you can be confident that your CMS choice will support your web site's needs because you have carefully assessed your requirements and explored the available options.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Choosing an Open Source CMS
Credits
About the author
About the reviewers
Preface
13
Hosting your CMS-Powered Site

You need a CMS!


Mario is quick. He asserts that Oprah needs a Content Management System (CMS). It's a software that will give her all the required features, and he can set it up on her web site. Apart from managing site content and navigation, a CMS may also allow interactive content such as discussions, newsletters, blogs, photo galleries, and so on.

Mario explains a variety of benefits from using a CMS. They are:

  • Dynamic content—changes reflect immediately

  • Easily make changes—using just a browser and familiar editing tool (similar to Word)

  • Manage site navigation and sections—ability to add or order pages and other content

  • Control over design—tweak the entire site the way you wish from a single place

  • Add interactive content such as discussions, class schedules, shopping cart, and so on.

  • Add photos, links, and other rich media easily

  • Get full control over the web site

  • Allow multiple people to manage the site

Oprah interrupts Mario and says she appreciates these benefits, but wants to know if there are any other alternatives.

CMS alternatives

"What you need IS a content management system. We can go ahead with a readily available system, or hire someone to build one from scratch. I could write a CMS for you, but your needs are not so specific. I would rather use an open source CMS and customize it to your needs. Who wants to reinvent the wheel, you see!", Mario says.

"This makes sense." Oprah is thinking. "If I want things to be dynamic, I will need some kind of software to do that. I know that people use some web-based software to manage their sites. I can easily pick that up..."

Mario continues, "If you simply wanted to publish photos, you can use some photo management software on your machine and publish the site on a server. If you want to write regular updates on Yoga, you could start a blog. And you could use a 'hosted' blog where you don't have to do any server setup, or the like. You just write content. If you want static content, we can use some other online tools that help design web sites. What you want is manage content and site frequently, and on your own. We also want full control and our own site to be the host. That certainly is what CMSs are designed for."

Oprah is now convinced that she needs a CMS.