Web Development Articles

There are a huge number of Content Management Systems (CMS) out there. The benefit of using a ready-made CMS is that it will probably be a fairly advanced system that will more than likely cater for all of your needs. The beauty of many Content Management Systems is that they are also distributed as Open Source (OS) which means that their source code is freely available to view and edit.

Downloading and installing a web-based CMS can enable you to offer advanced networking tools for a vast amount of users. CMS solutions are suitable for almost any application imaginable. Open Source Content Management Systems allow for unlimited flexibilty as new functionality can be added whenever circumstances necessitate it.

This short article outlines a few of the CMS solutions available and what they are geared towards.

Joomla (Mambo)

According to the Joomla website, "Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable."

Joomla! is a product delivered by Open Source Matters (OSM), the same team that developed the Mambo CMS. The OSM team took the final stable version of Mambo (4.5.2.3), polished off some rough edges and named it Joomla! 1.0. This newly renamed CMS was released in September 2005.

OSCommerce

OSCommerce is powered by PHP and MySQL and is an Open Source based online shop / e-commerce solution. It features a wealth of online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.

There are plenty of add-ons available (over 3500) which means you will not have to look far in order to find the exact functionality you require. OSCommerce has proved ideal for thousands of store owners. Seems like a pretty safe bet if you're wanting to open up an online store with minimum hassle.

Typo3

TYPO3 is a small to midsize enterprise-class Content Management Framework offering out-of-the-box operation with a complete set of standard modules and a high-performance architecture accomodating almost any kind of application. TYPO3 is written in PHP and is powered by a MySQL core database but TYPO3 also offers support for other databases such as Oracle and MSSQL.

TYPO3 is suitable for authors, administrators, content managers, web developers and agencies...

Some other Content Management Systems are listed below:

PHP-Nuke
TikiWiki
Drupal
Moodle