The term "open source" is a key distinction. The term means the software’s source code is freely available for everyone to see and change (as opposed the source code for a hosted-cms), but it has many wider implications. While proprietary software is created, distributed, and maintained by a business, with open source software these tasks are handled by a community of developers and users. Just how effective that community is at its job is an important consideration when choosing an open source CMS.
Open source content management systems are free in many ways. They’re free as in "free speech"—you can do what you wish with the product and the code behind it, extending and integrating it as you see fit. They’re free as in "free beer"—there’s no license cost for the software. Anyone can download them and install them on a Web server without cost (though you’ll need to pay for the Web server and someone to install the systems). And they’re free as in "free kittens"—that is, an open source CMS takes work. You’ll either need to put a lot of time into implementing and maintaining your system, or hire someone to do it for you. And no CMS will magically design and write your whole Web site for you—that’s a job for humans, or fish in this case.
Project BIG fish recommends the following content management systems:
DRUPAL
Flexible and powerful, Drupal is a great choice for more complex sites. It supports a wide variety of site structures—you can define very detailed rules as to what content should be displayed where, and build your own custom content types. It has particularly strong support for Web 2.0 and community functionality, including group blogs and user-submitted content. It’s also easy for your content administrators to find and update content.
Along with the standard content editing tools, a typical Drupal also includes:
– Full Blogging capabilities including commenting, tagging and rss.
– Banner advertising with random display and tracking of graphical (banner) and text ads.
– Addthis.com functionality to let your users share your content to social network sites.
– Event Registration / RSVP / Member Sign up
– Image & Content Slideshow plus picture galleries
– Google Map integration
– Polls and Voting
– Custom URLs provides a single, nice, clean URL for every page
– New domain/landing page setup utilizing the ability to select pre-designed templates
– Search Engine Optimization
– Google Analytics integration
JOOMLA
Joomla is a solid utility player, good for a variety of different situations. It’s relatively straightforward to install and set up. The system is divided into three types of pages: Sections, Categories, and Articles. There’s a bit of a learning curve to understand how they work and interrelate, but once you’ve got it the system provides a strong infrastructure for straightforwardly creating useful site structures to support even very large sites. Add-on modules support a wide variety of functionalities, from shopping carts to community features, providing a solid base for many different kinds of sites.
Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available extensions:
– Dynamic form builders
– Business directories
– Document management
– Image and multimedia galleries
– E-commerce and shopping cart engines
– Forums and chat software
– Calendars & Event Planners
– Data collection and reporting tools
– Banner advertising systems
– Subscription services
– and many, many more…
Which one is for you?
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