Your website’s content is by far it’s most important attribute. Without interesting content your visitors will not return to your site in the future, in fact they probably will never find it to begin with! Simply uploading good content one time and then leaving your website’s in hopes of creating a megasite is not realistic. If you want your site flourish then you’ll need to update the content daily. This can be a problem for many business owners, because it can be very time consuming. To boost business productivity, many people use content management systems to create, upload, organize and store content for their website. Below are some of the advantages of content management systems.

Templates and Design

Content management systems give you the ability to store multiple templates for your website’s design, making website development quick and simple. With a good CMS you can change the template without affecting the pre-existing content on your website. This makes re-designing your website hassle-free, and eliminates the trial and error that is often associated with doing so. You can also build databases of templates so you have a wide selection to choose from at any time.

Updating Content

Content management systems also let you update content automatically on a scheduled basis, which means you can now set it and forget it as you wish. If you employ the use of freelance writers you can also grant them permissions and controlled access to the site, which will make your job a lot easier. You can let one user upload content and another edit it.

Runs on Your Operating System

You can also make changes to your website while you are offline by editing the content in your content management system which runs on your operating system. Then when you connect to the internet all of the changes will take place immediately. This is probably one of the most convenient features of a good CMS, as you no longer must rely on a constant internet connection to improve your website, and even without a connection you can aces all of your website’s files and databases directly form the operating system.

Polls and Surveys

With a content management system you can also publish polls and surveys on your website with ease. These polls and surveys give good insight into the interests of your visitors, which will ultimately let you know what kind of content you need to focus on uploading in the future.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds bring traffic to your site by linking your updates to other popular sites within your niche. You can also use RSS feeds to snatch content form other website’s and then spin it using certain applications that can be added to your site’s control panel. RSS feeds also allow visitors to keep track of your updates directly from their browsers toolbar.

Open source content management systems are beginning to gather quite a reputation and customer base lately thanks to the recent announcement by the White House of its move from proprietary solutions to open source CMS heavyweight, Drupal.  Full service hosting provider NeoSpire has been a long time advocate of open source software and specializes in solutions incorporating Drupal.

Do It With Drupal Seminar

From December 9^th to 11^th, 2009 in New Orleans, the Do It With Drupal Seminar will take place and NeoSpire is not only one of its top sponsors but will be exhibiting as well.  The seminar promises to have some of Drupal’s top developers on tap to teach more about the program as well as information from community building experts.

Patrons of the event can expect to see successful Drupal sites and meet with like-minded professionals, developers, designers and more all intertwined within the Drupal community.  The event will allow interested participants the chance to see the actual workings behind the architect and building of a Drupal web site.  Topics such as building and growing successful web sites with Drupal will be covered.

The cost of this three-day event is $1195 until December 8^th.  Thereafter, walkup registration is $1295.

NeoSpire

NeoSpire managed hosting provides a number of hosting solutions designed to meet the demands of organizations needing a 100% guaranteed up-time.  NeoSpire has been in the web hosting business since 1999 and continues to provide extremely secure and reliable solutions for their hosting customers.  The hosting provider offers several managed hosting options, co-location services, application hosting and more.

One of the more interesting offers by this company is its Drupal CMS Hosting.  NeoSpire offers fully managed Drupal hosting that covers everything from simple web sites to load balanced and redundant set-ups.  The company even has a specially dedicated Drupal support team that are considered the best server admin and tech support people in their field.  Not many web hosting companies available on the Internet sport the same offering or specialized support team.  It is a testament to the security and reliability of both NeoSpire and Drupal.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source CMS program that was initially created in 2000 by an enterprising man, Dries Buytaert.  What initially began as a small news site allowing friends to leave notes to each other gradually grew into the full-blown content management system available today.

The Drupal CMS is extremely extendable with several hundreds of modules to add onto the main program and hundreds of themes to change the overall look.  As an open source project, many third party programmers are heavily involved with the project creating new and innovative modules almost every day.  Drupal users can expect to be able to find just about anything they require within the Drupal module download area.  Administration, e-commerce, file management, statistics, and spam prevention are just a small percentage of what can be found.

Conclusion

A world-class open source CMS program coupled with a world-class hosting solution provider is a dream combination.  NeoSpire and Drupal are, indeed, doing it.

“e107, It’s a candy store (and you’re 8)” proclaims the web site of the open source CMS program e107.  One of the older and more well-known open source content management systems around, e107 strives to be a community based program with a lot of input from its users.

Beginnings

What began as a web site related to the Windows shell replacement Litestep, quickly started gathering speed and evolved into e107 (the seventh project taken on by the owner of this content management system).  Officially open to the public in July 2002, e107 was already a few months old and into its 2.1 version.  As with most CMS programs, attempting to do it alone is never a good idea so the program owner brought on board a few seasoned developers.  Several updates and revisions late and e107 has its current stable 0.7.16 release available to the public (the owner changed version numbering partway through its early production stages).

Plugins

Once e107 is installed and running, enhancing this content management program is a breeze.  The site is affiliated with e107 Plugins (separate entity but tied in with the main web site) and this area is overflowing with downloadable files to add to the base core of e107.  Administration tools, e-commerce, file and directory, and multimedia are a few of the categories covered in this plugin web site.

Themes

e107 has two design web sites affiliated with its main core program – e107 Themes and e107 Designs.  This is where the one downfall with this CMS program may lay.  While there are a number to of designs to choose from, the total number is limited to under 200.  This makes the likelihood of having a unique e107 run web site fairly slim.  However, the program is based on PHP and if the user of the program has a bit of experience with PHP coding, creating a unique web design for the program should be a fairly easy task.

Community

As e107 depends heavily on community input and feedback, the forum area of this open source program’s web site is extremely active.  Covering topics such as third party coding, support, theme request and more, e107 keeps tabs on what users want, what they don’t like and what they have to offer to enhance the software overall.

Sites

e107 is proud to showcase the many web sites utilizing their open source software.  Among the more diverse sites to be found on their webring are Waves of Faith, KISS 105 FM of Indonesia, and CuartoPoder.com.mx (touted as the first newspaper site powered by the CMS).

Conclusion

While not one of the top heavy hitters when it comes to open source content management systems, e107 is a great product with quite a lot to offer.  If one is in need of a CMS that has more than a couple hundred designs to choose from, this program may not be the best choice.  However, for those with a bit of PHP knowledge and some time on their hands to create their own design, e107 can be a great addition to help create and maintain a business web site.

When it comes to creating a large, content rich site, it is important to know that you have many tools available to you, not just the popular brands that get all the press hype.  Unfortunately, the plethora of CMS options only makes choosing one that much harder.  This complexity compounded by all the myths that come along with content management are enough to persuade you into giving up and dropping your plans altogether.  Many have the misconception that they cannot succeed with a CMS due to fears of needing to be a proficient web programmer.  While this is true with some programs, most content management systems are easy to use and require no programming skills at all.  This is definitely the case with Xoops, a powerful CMS on the rise.

What Can Xoops Do?

Xoops is the ideal CMS for a wide range of situations.  It makes a viable tool for creating dynamic websites or community sites big or small for informational or business matters.  Whether it is a blog or corporate intranet site, Xoops can help you get it up and running efficiently.  Perhaps the best thing about this CMS is that it is open-source software free to download, use and modify.  This means that if you have your own in-house team, you can develop modules and extensions to greatly enhance its core functionality.

Flexible and Highly Extensible

The Xoops framework is very flexible and allows you to use the platform in a variety of ways.  For example, you can choose to install a lite Xoops instance, which is recommended for smaller personal blogs or journals.  Though a more compact version with less features, a lite installation  includes a news module that is integrated with the core framework and serves great purpose for such projects.  The standard version is best suited for medium sized sites as it allows you to make use of additional modules such as Forum, Web Links and Download.  These modules will go a long way in creating a community friendly environment that encourages interaction among your site members and visitors.  A larger, content-rich e-commerce site can thrive from customize modules, which are widely available both free and commercially through third-party developers.  These additions include security modules that provide firewall and anti-virus protection, customized HTML editors and word processing modules, backup and restore modules, diagnostic modules and several more.

Consider Xoops for Your Project

Xoops is becoming increasingly popular at a rapid rate, serving as a worthy competition to popular open-source content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal and Mambo.  With all the modules and extensions its supports, this is clearly one of the most extensible out of the whole bunch.  Although having a little technical abilities will help your efforts in terms of customization, Xoops delivers out of the box functionality that allows anyone to have success creating and maintaining a content-rich site.  This CMS puts all the tools you need to create forums, news items, blogs, and wikis right at your finger tips.

Content management systems got their name by providing users with a way to manage virtually every bit of content associated with a website.  In regard to content, it could be simple text articles, photo images, music videos and almost anything you can imagine on a website.  Most content management systems are designed in a manner that lets you perform these tasks regardless of technical skill.  When it comes to content management, there are many options available to you.  For example, you can choose to purchase a commercial product or an open-source version that doesn’t cost you dime.  If want to save a few bucks and still have a great content-rich site, you may be interested in a popular software package known as Joomla.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is an award-winning CMS that gives you the ability to create and run powerful websites.

The software has many qualities but some of its major draws are ease of use and an extensibility that allows you to greatly enhance the functionality of your site.  This platform is ideal for creating all types of sites, be it a personal homepage, corporate intranet or extranet, online newspaper or community portal.  Joomla is relied on by manywell known entities including CitiBank, MTV Networks and the IHOP restaurant chain.

How Easy is It?

The Joomla CMS was designed with simplicity in mind, making it easy to install and maintain even if you have no idea of what content management is all about.  In fact, most web hosting providers enable you to incorporate the software in a few easy clicks through application installers such as Fantastico.  A back-end interface makes Joomla simple to use for experienced web designers and developers as well as those who have never managed a website in their life.  The software doesn’t call for you to have any programming knowledge though you can take customization to the next level by having a familiarity of technologies such as HTML, PHP and CSS.

How Advanced Does it Get?

Joomla may be incredibly easy to use but that does not take away from its sophistication.  This software package extends benefits to those with needs beyond the norm, acting as a dynamic framework that allows developers to create advanced modules and dramatically enhance its capabilities.  These enhancements are all made possible because of its nature as an open-source CMS.  Thus, not only can you incorporate third-party extensions, but also grab a hold of the source code and create your own.  For the experienced user, the functionality of Joomla is virtually unlimited.

What About Support?

Just like most open-source software applications, the biggest downside to Joomla is the lack of technical support.  On the bright side, this CMS is so popular that support for it can be found all over the web.  There are official Joomla forums as well as resources provided by unofficial sites simply looking to lend a hand to the community.  The Joomla community is well over 200,000 strong and counting, almost ensuring that you can find someone to aid in your content management needs.