Content Management System

2008 October 01 | 10:55 pm

Contributed by: anti • antigrammar.com

Introduction

Anyone who has hand coded and uploaded a website for very long soon starts to consider automating the uploads in some fashion. For someone who is less comfortable with computers, the automation becomes a necessity. Writing a thoughtful post, or even a quick update while you run out the door, is a complete task into itself and can be made much easier with a few scripts to update menus and display your post in the proper place.

One of the free services such as Blogger or Wordpress.com would seem be a good choice for someone with limited technical skills. There are many advantages to having the big boys do the heavy lifting. Convienence comes at a price, however, and control over content and operation is what is traded away.

Think you want to install your own blog software? Most systems ship with an installer; simply upload to your server, answer a few questions about the database setup, and away you go. The difficult part may be in choosing which software to install. While it is possible to convert an existing site into a new system, it may be best to try a few different options and make an informed decision on which is the best fit. Every solution has it's own advantages and drawbacks, and you may be living with your choice for years to come. Like in any good marriage, it is best to say I don't know.

So what are the choices? There are any number of open source and commercial systems available. Here are a few of the more popular and established systems that you may want to check out first.

Wordpress

Wordpress is extremely popular, easy to use, and has a great number of themes and plugins. Wordpress is blog software at heart, but it can be customized to look and act like any sort of website.
Wordpress Project Page >>

b2evolution

b2evolution is derived from the same codebase as Wordpress, but is built from the ground up to support a multi-user installation, making it useful as a community portal or group website.
b2evolution Project Page >>

Movable Type

Movable Type was the first blog software blog package to become widely popular, and there is now an open source version available for download. MT uses a combination of Perl and PHP and builds static pages. All of the code is well seperated from the XHTML and CSS, making Movable Type very easy to customize.
Movable Type Project Page >>

Drupal

Drupal is often considered overkill for a one-person blog. Drupal will take more planning and tweaking to accomplish what the others do right out of the box, but it is a valid option, especially if other systems seem too confining.
Drupal Project Page >>

Joomla!

Joomla! is a nice start for those wanting to dip their toes into CMS, and includes a lot of eye candy out of the box. Advanced users may find Joomla! to be a bit too confining...
Joomla! Project Page >>