How To Choose An Open Source CMS 191
An anonymous reader writes "Content management specialist Seth Gottlieb has written an easy to understand how-to on selecting an open source CMS. Gottlieb is also responsible for the whitepaper 'Content Management Problems and Open Source Solutions' which summarizes 15 open source projects and distinguishes between open source CMS and proprietary software selection."
Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:5, Informative)
Killer features (Score:4, Informative)
Different CMS shares a lot of features, but some features are unique from one to another and might influence your choice...
Tech Support. (Score:2, Informative)
www.OpenSourceCMS.com invaluable (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com] works as a nice Sandbox environment that auto-refreshes every hour or so (ie: each CMS is automatically reset to a clean install, so though you lose anything you try out, you can't mess things up.)
It's a great way to get an initial feel for various CMS's in one tight place.
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/ [gmailtips.com]
Zope-Based CMS Products (Score:4, Informative)
There's been an ongoing discussion about this same topic over at Macintouch [macintouch.com].
Personally I'm a fan of the Zope [zope.org] / CMF [zope.org] series of content management systems; the built-in CMF is quite powerful and flexible (and actually fairly efficient -- don't be fooled by the slowness of some CMSs built on top).
There are many such systems. There are some in private use (like Boston.com [boston.com] and Saugus.net [saugus.net]. There are also some commercial options (like Icoya [icoya.com]). Most though are free and open source, like Plone [plone.org], Infrae Silva [infrae.com], and Nuxeo CPS [cps-project.org]. Each has its own focus and tends to do certain things better than the others. Each has its own special plug-ins and extensions, but since they all utilize the same underlying base framework, it's usually a doable thing (although typically not trivial) to port a product from one to another.
The capabilities of Zope's built-in CMF are also good enough that it's not at all unreasonable to fashion one's own CMS on top of it if none of the existing products seem to suit one's own particular needs.
For Java Freaks (Score:4, Informative)
http://java-source.net/open-source/content-managm
OpenSourceCMS.com covers only few systems (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately OpenSourceCMS.com only showcases the lightweight CMSs, usually categorized under the low-end collaborative portals label.
Paul Everitt from Zope has a very good blog post about Open Source CMS positioning [weblogs.com]
My Plug For Geeklog (Score:3, Informative)
I use is for the base of many commercial web sites, utilizing the WYSISYG (FCKeditor) page editor and the news manager. It provides an excellent frame work for developing sites on top of, especially if you need a basic website with some extras thrown in.
It also runs sites such as http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net] and http://worldmusiccentral.org/ [worldmusiccentral.org]
By changing the templates or config to eliminate links to the parts you do not need, (example, links pages, polls, etc), you can use the user login, edit, and admin parts to allow your web clients to edit their own pages, saving you the trouble and saving them money in the long run. The templates are completely separate from the code, allowing you to design graphics for the site separate from the code.
Updates are pretty easy if you keep your custom code out of the main install, a process that is pretty easy if you put your code in lib-custom.php. The code is well written and clear enough for a person with basic php knowledge to hack if they like
The software is all php/mysql and run efficiently on most linux shared hosts. There are also a wide variety of plugins.
The forum and developers are responsive to support requests.
just my two cents from a fan of geeklog,
it is also available for demo at http://opensourcecms.com/ [opensourcecms.com]
Re:Non open-source CMS no good ? (Score:1, Informative)
I strongly disagree here. I have used Jahia before, and the money the company paid and the time it invested to get everything working would be enough to have an Open-Source CMS almost completely rewritten. Of course, the demands were quite big in that case - so an administrator was needed as well who needs deep knowledge. IMHO, Jahia is not targetted to the "small websites"?
In fact, many OS CMS, like zope/plone or typo3, to name some bigger ones, are quite userfriendly to the end-user (who is normally an editor.) Of course, the administrators need to be trained and experienced as well, but I am sure this is the same with commercial CM systems.
Greez,
Re:Etomite (Score:1, Informative)
Take a look at the bottom of the page:
http://www.etomite.org/legal.html [etomite.org]
They even tell you about the 'call home' feature, and they also inform you that it can be removed.
Re:Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:3, Informative)
There are many good F/OSS CMSes that aren't based on PHP, and probably some that don't run on MySQL.
Drupal for me too! (Score:4, Informative)
Druapl is also very configurable, even without having to write any code at all. It is all done with PHP, Apache, MySQL, which most GNU/Linux distributions seem to have already on the distribution media. Install your favorite distro, and Drupal fits in quite nicely.
Re:CMS is less important than people (Score:3, Informative)
ClearQuest is bug tracking (like bugzilla), ClearCase is versioning (like CVS or Subversion)
Totally wrong group of tools.
On that note, I happen to be in a RedDot training class as I write this... Their tool (while not free) is super easy to use. I am traditionally trained in Documentum.
One pet peeve is when people condsider things like Nuke or SlashCode CMS systems. They are really just blogs in my opinion. Not nearly as sophisticated as a real CMS system.
Re:Non open-source CMS no good ? (Score:2, Informative)
I understand what you are saying, but there are other options instead of setting up your own server running Linux, Apache, MySQL, Php, etc. There are many ISP's and webhosting companies that will do almost all of the work for you. I worked with a friend to setup a website for our chruch and our ISP uses a web based admin interface that installed Joomla, configured MySQL for us. All we did was click "install joomla". Additionally, checking that interface periodically give us the opportunity to install updates with one click.
Not that everyone here needs that much help, but it sure beats having to maintain servers for friends, associates, or organizations who don't have the time or skills to do it themselves.
Determine Criteria Before Selecting Tool. (Score:5, Informative)
A few starter questions:
1. What content do I have or expect to have? (web pages? documents? discussion forums? image galleries?)
2. Where does this content come from? (departments? users? myself? Internet sources? databases? third-party apps?)
3. How should the system manage this content? (workflows? editors? fine-grained access control?)
4. How should this content be displayed? (xhtml/css? pdf? print/paper? cell phones? xml? rss?)
5. How much separation of content and design do you require?
6. How extensible should the CMS be? (in-house development? modular? out-sourced development? completely opensource?)
7. What are the administrative requirements? (*nix? mysql/postgresql? apache? php? python?)
8. What is the anticipated load and can the CMS manage that? (quite different from a 5,000 hits/day site vs 20,000,000 hits/day)
9. What is the estimated lifetime of the website? What changes to the site are forseeable and should be considered?
Assuming your doing something more than a personal blog site, most likely pre-existing workflow processes and organizational resources already exist and those should be analyzed when making a CMS choice.
Don't get overly focused on initial setup times. The cost of administration, development and resources will far outweigh the initial setup costs on all but the smallest of sites.
Re:Hm, an OpenSource CMS? (Score:5, Informative)
If you know in advance you must be using PHP, and you're not sure whether you want a portal, CMS, weblog, etc, then this is a good site.
However, if you have other languages in mind, or are open to a good CMS in any language, you should check other sources. One good reference site is CMS Matrix [cmsmatrix.org]. Another good source of CMS information is CMS Watch [cmswatch.com]; even though it concentrates on the entire spectrum of CMS systems (including commercial ones) it occasionally has very good articles or pointers to articles about open source products (like this one [blogspot.com] which I just found).
Re:Best CMS (Score:2, Informative)
ftp://mylogin@myisp.co.uk/
in the file requester, give your password when asked, and you should be in! If you have a shell account, try fish:// instead -- this uses an SSH connection and so everything is encrypted. If you accidentally muck up the password entry, try entering
ftp://mylogin:password@myisp.co.uk/
to fix it, but obviously don't do this if anyone is watching. The password will disappear when the URL is redisplayed.
This is not just confined to Kate -- it works with all the other KDE applications, too. You can even open an ftp or fish directory in Konqueror, and just drag-and-drop files into it.
chucking the lot (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the logic:
1. A very basic site (read: a blog) with a very basic CMS is generally not hard to set up.
2. The technical issue: as sites get more complicated, the level of sophistication required by the user to install and maintain them increases. (In the extreme case, I submit Xaraya [xaraya.org], a CMS so complicated that trying to create a site as simple as "I just want a page with our contact information on it!" becomes an exercise capable of inducing intra-cranial hemmorage). Additionally, any templating system required grows more and more arcane, until it is essentially indistingushable from the actual programming language in which it's written.For example: the easiest way of getting a Drupal [drupal.org] site laid out and usable quickly is to use the PHPTemplate plugin - in other words, to just write PHP code. David Heinemeier Hansson, no stranger to controversy, went a step further than this and labeled general-purpose CMSes "pipe dreams," [loudthinking.com] and said "I believe the time has come to mark a date in the not too distant future for celebrating the death of the general-purpose content management system." (Not like he doesn't have his own thing to push [rubyonrails.com], but that's as may be. See also Jeff Veen's frustration with open source CMSes [veen.com]
3. The social issue: as the content management system grows more and more complicated, they become more and more intractable for the average end user. Responsibility for day to day site updates is pushed to the IT department, which is absolutely not where it belongs. (Once again, I give you the one, the only, Jeffrey Veen [adaptivepath.com].)
Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content (Score:2, Informative)
Another article on this topic:
Linux Journal: Seven Criteria for Evaluating Open-Source Content Management Systems [linuxjournal.com]