Content Management Systems Demystified

A content management system can be puzzling to non-web savvy users. It can even be complicated for web designers and programmers. This is not a guide for the latter, rather it is a quick overview for the former. If you have heard of a content management system (or CMS) and are wondering what one is, this is the place to start. A CMS can basically fall into one of two categories. It can be a catch-all that is intended to do a million things. Alternatively, it can be very specialized. To add to the complication, some specialized CMS's can be integrated into a catch-all CMS. We won't really get into that specific situation much here, but I will mention when it's possible. Also, there are tons and tons of CMS programs out there. I'm only going to be mentioning some that are available for free and are open source. That way, if you read about something here that interests you, you search Google and get it immediately with no monetary risk to you. Catch-All PHPNuke PHP-Nuke is an excellent CMS for a news site. It is divided into modules, each of which performs a specific functions. In addition to modules made by the PHP-Nuke team, there are tons of other modules available from 3rd-party programmers. The primary module for most sites using PHP-Nuke is the News module. The Reviews module is for reviewing books, movies, or pretty much anything you would want to review. The Advertising module helps you set up banner ads on your website for revenue. A Downloads module is available for web site visitors to download PDF files, movie files, or any type of file. A Recommend Us module allows users to (you guessed it) recommend your website to someone else. The possibilities are really endless for someone who decides to use PHP-Nuke. However, because it is a catch-all content management system, it isn't for everyone. It may have way more features that you need. Drupal Drupal is a CMS that also uses modules. There are lots of modules available. A Story module provides a similar functionality to PHP-Nuke's News module. A Profile module supports configurable user profiles. The Blog module enables keeping an easily updatable blog. An Upload module allows users to attach files to news stories or blog entries. Again, you end up with the same issues as other catch-all CMS's where this may be more CMS that you really need. But Drupal does have about the same amount of modules out there as PHP-Nuke does. Drupal even does a better job than PHP-Nuke of listing the best modules at their own website. Image Galleries Gallery Gallery is the definitive gallery software. You can upload images, sort into albums, resize, delete, restrict access, etc. You can even plug it into most catch-all CMS's, including both PHP-Nuke and Drupal. Coppermine Coppermine is another popular gallery. It has most of the same features as Gallery, but cannot plug into catch-all CMS's as easily as Gallery. Also, if you are wanting visitors to your site to be able create albums, Coppermine currently doesn't support that. Blogging bBlog bBlog is reportedly used by thousands of bloggers world-wide. It allows for text formatting, visitor comments, syndicated RSS feeds (If you don't know what that is, don't worry about it. You don't have to for your visitors to be able to use it.) and categories. The downside is that bBlog is not quite as powerful as some of its competitors. However, if you have a site that's a pretty straightforward blog, bBlog can be a simple, effective solution. WordPress WordPress is one of the most popular free blogging software packages. It's very easy to use, and unlike bBlog, it has a toolbar for text formatting. Of course, it has visitor commenting, searching, categories and other features. Being much more popular than other blogging systems like bBlog, there are a lot more plugins available from third parties. Forums phpBB phpBB is probably the single most popular feature-rich free forum software out there. It's so popular that it comes pre-installed in some catch-all CMS's, including PHP-Nuke. The downside is that it can be extremely complicated. You may not need 10 different forums for 500+ users. If not, this software package may be a bit of overkill for you. WWWBoard WWWBoard is a simple forum package. It shows all the message subjects on one screen. Once you click on a message subject, you are shown the message itself. From there you can reply, or view another message in the same thread. Remember that for the majority of the software I've mentioned here, you have to have mySQL database capabilities on your server, in addition to PHP capabilities. If you are using free hosting, you probably don't have that. If you're not sure, contact your web hosting company and ask them.