Open Source CMS solution

BANGALORE, INDIA: Every business needs to have web presence today. In fact, you can't expect to do great things if you don't have a website. And when it comes to the web, the days of boring, static pages are long gone. To simply put, you need to choose the perfect Content Management System (CMS) for your web presence. This choice is important in the sense that the ultimate look and feel of your website relies almost entirely on the CMS you decide to employ.

Over 95 percent of the CMSes are Open Source, and that number says it all! Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal ?you name it! No matter what sort of business you are running, Open Source ensures that you are in safe hands.

So, how do we choose the best CMS? The good thing is that there are numerous free CMS options available. The first thing to consider is the type of website that you are planning to build. If it is an e-commerce site, your requirements will be different from that of someone running a forum. Once, you've decided on the type or genre of your website, you may get to the available CMS options, along with each other's pros and cons.

Before you choose a CMS!

Flexibility: Simply put, a good CMS should allow you to effectively manage your website with the least possible efforts. A WYISWYG Editor is a must, along with a plethora of plugins. You should be able to customize your website the way you want, not the way your CMS wants. Nowadays, most CMSes come bundled with plugins and modules that allow you to do virtually anything that you may want. However, not all plugins are alike, and certain CMSes like Wordpress and Joomla score over the rest in terms of plugins' repository for the simple reason that their developers' community is more active.

Adaptability: Anyone running a website for a business knows that it is crucial that time is spent setting up the website, not the CMS. If you are running a collaborative site with many contributors, ease of use of the CMS becomes all the more important. It is here that the adaptability features of the CMS come in handy. Needless to say, it will be a sure disadvantage if you end up 'teaching' your staff how to deal with the CMS. Most CMSes offer user friendly interfaces now, though many still lag behind.

Functionality: A good CMS offers way more than just creation of pages. It all comes down to the user to get the most out of it. For example, if you are running a blog with hundreds of posts and just two pages, Wordpress, Textpattern and even Dotclear will serve your purpose, but Pixelpost won't. In case of an enterprise website, Magento will be the obvious choice for e-commerce solutions and not Drupal, simply because Magento is custom-built for such tasks and thus offers better functionality.

Plugins, Addons & Extensions: Most CMSes employ plugins and extensions to manage data and present it. For instance, Wordpress has a world-renowned plugin to combat spam named Akismet. On a similar tone, a newer plugin called Defensio offers the same feature set as Akismet.

Such plugins/extensions are usually installed using the user interface or by uploading the required files via FTP. Quite obviously, it is a wise choice if you ensure that the CMS you are going to bank upon is backed by the requisite plugins and extensions. This will save you time and efforts as most of the repetitive coding will be taken care of by plugins and addons.

Security: No one can underestimate the importance of securing one's online presence. While most CMSes secure the management end (i.e. admin, control panel, etc.), not all of them may do the same with the directory and site folders. For instance, while running my photo blog, I noticed that Pixelpost had left my .htaccess file with public visibility and editable. In that case, you may need to manually mark your crucial files as 'read-only'.

Majority of the CMS software though now offer extensions that take care of the security front for you, unless you opt for a really obsolete CMS with rare updates.

Update mechanism: The world of technology is ever changing, and you'd surely not want your enterprise to be stuck with floppy diskettes in the age of USB. Same goes with CMS software. While some offer fort-nightly updates (like Wordpress), others take their sweet time in bringing out an update (say, Zikula).

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