Content Management Software

Hi Everyone,

A member from my design group has posted a message about Content Management Software. He/she says they are planning to start a web design business and someone has told he/she that they need this software to be able to do so. They know absolutely nothing about it, nor do I, so I was wondering if anyone may be able to help he/she out, me too, since I'm starting my business next year and let me know everything you possibly can about it.

IE: What it does, what it is, where you get it, how much it costs, is it essential to running a business, how do you use it, any links to a website about it? etc etc

Thanks in advance...

A content management system (cms) allows people to update websites more easily without getting too involved in code. For the most part it allows you to manage content easier, so that you can get it on the site quicker and without as much technical skills. Price range from Free to hundreds of dollars. I do not think it is essential to running a business in my opinion. In my case I do not use one. However it might make sense with some businesses where you have certain people appointed with the task to put content on the site, such as articles. Maybe you appointed those people because they have really great writing skills, but know nothing about HTML or how to do anything with code. A CMS could allow them to easily update the site once they became familiar with the particular CMS system without really learning any technical skills.

You can find a variety of PHP CMS systems here:

http://www.bigwebmaster.com/PHP/Scripts ... anagement/

and a few PERL ones here:

http://www.bigwebmaster.com/Perl/Script ... anagement/

So having a CMS system is not required, but it may make sense to use one depending on the circumstances.

You dont "need" content management software (CMS) to run a web design business. CMS's allow you to manage/update content on your website at the click of a few buttons. Just say you want to add a new announcement to the announcement section on your index, you'd login to the admin panel on your CMS, go over to the index options and click "Add New Announcement". Just a basic example of what it does. It makes managing your web site more easy. One of the better known CMS's is [ mambo ]. I installed it and tinkered with some features just for fun, it was pretty cool. You can play with their demo version [ here ] to get a feel of what a CMS is and the features it offers. You can also upload new themes and change the look of your site pretty easily as well.

As far as costs, mambo is free, and you can find other CMS's free as well. Again, you dont really need a CMS to run a business, you can create your own or just manually input data. Fool around with mambo and see if the features it offer are useful for you.

Thankyou VERY much guys!

Two sites I found absolutely invaluable when evaluating a CMS:

http://www.cmsmatrix.org
CMS specs and popularity rating

http://www.opensourcecms.com
Try tons of different CMSses before you decide

I just happened across this one, and plan to have a better look at it. Seems it might be a good place for someone new to CMSses to begin, as one of the articles I see on the homepage is about determining whether or not a CMS is right for you.
http://www.cmsjournal.com

The new mambo is Joomla =)
http://joomla.org/

And it's absolutely awsome. You can view it in action at any of the links in my sig. The store and the forum (phpBB) are both mods that are installed with a few mouse clicks.

Nooooooooo! It took me ages to decide between Drupal and Mambo, and now there's another option? *groan*

Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out now.

Other then the admin area looking just a bit better, I really don't see any added benefit of Joomla. I believe it is just what they are going to be calling all future releases of mambo

For creating relatively simple sites very quickly, Nozomi does a good job. It's a hosted system so you won't have to bother with installation, upgrades and so on.

In time, when you get more confident with installing your own system, upgrading etc. you should try something like Typo3 or e107 but they require quite a bit of technical insight.

http://www.typo3.com is pretty nice in opensource for corporate sites.

Etomite (etomite.org) is quick and easy to use for simple sites - and easy to turn non-techies loose on to update their own content.

Also looked at joomla few days ago. Looks very powerful, but not as simple for non-techies. Would probably have a steeper learning curve, but probably worth it.

try mambo, a good and well known CMS

http://www.mamboserver.com/


it's free

Well

phpnuke
mambo
xoops
joomla
...

those are so well known, but i just found out CMS made simple... its the easyest to use i have seen.

I think it is inevitable trends that more and more people will be using CMS to update their website. Not to say cutom web design will die, but with CMS , the website could be update faster and easier. Just like ready-made clothes, it is fast and easy right ? custom web design is like custom cloth design, some people, like me still prefer custom clothes to indicate my personality.


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