Frog is an ideal CMS for users who are not afraid to get down and dirty with a little hands on development.  While it doesn’t necessarily require that you learn PHP, it does help that you pay attention and expand your knowledge of the language if you want to make the most of the platform.  Aside from that, Frog is straightforward and relatively easy to manage for the savvy user.

Features

Frog is pretty basic in terms of features.  The most notable features are related to the flexibility of page design.  Everything from the homepage to articles and beyond are organized in hierarchical fashion.  Pages are easy to move around and snippets of code can be added to provide added flexibility where needed.  Frog offers a built-in file manager, but has no viable facility for managing images.  Luxuries such as this must be provided via plugins.

Ease of Use

The major selling point to the Frog CMS is simplicity.  It offers built-in drag-and-drop functionality that makes content creation a breeze.  This feature helps you save a lot of time and can actually add a little fun to your project.  Image resizing is also made easy, provided you have installed the free plugin that enables this functionality.

Content Management

Frog gives you a default administrative back-end that includes two tabs: plugins and settings.  The plugins tab offers a menu of all the plugins you have installed, including the most recently installed version, and options that allow you to easily enable or disable it.  The setting tab allows you to choose from two administrative themes, which Frog considers layouts, 20 different language options, an administrative site title, and various default options.  If your website is configured to receive comments, a comments tab will be automatically added to your administrative back-end.

Security

Frog does not offer a state of the art security system.  In fact, the only security features built into the software are granular privileges.  However, this is a great security to have.  The permission system allows you to create groups, assign users and establish privileges for different users from the menu in the administrative panel.   This makes it simple for a user to delegate work regardless of their experience or the technical aspects involved.

Community Support

Frog is an open-source CMS, so the only support you get for the software is provided by the community.  There is help online in the public forum where both developers and users hangout.  Unfortunately, nothing is guaranteed here as community support can be less than desirable depending on the situation.  Right about now, the lack of support is the biggest knock on the Frog CMS, but hopefully this changes as the project progresses and the community grows.

Final Thoughts

Frog isn’t necessarily the complete CMS that will meet all of your needs, but it is serviceable for many of them.  The software is small, lightweight and enforces good design and development practices.  While it is not the solution for everyone, it makes a fine choice for the niche market of developers who need to build a content rich site for themselves, or clients.

One of the more popular reasons to have a web site is blogging.  Blogging allows web users the ability to report news, express commentaries on various subjects or simply write about their personal experiences.  Online companies and businesses are beginning to see the usability of blogs and not only are incorporating them into their web sites but also expanding and desiring to be able to produce multiple blogs.  This is where a product like B2Evolution steps in – a multi-blog program that is free and open sourced.

All user types

B2Evolution caters to several different levels of bloggers.  There are many types of bloggers – those that are new and those who have been at it for quite some time.  This program works for all.

For the absolute virgin in the world of blogging, B2Evolution allows users to simply type in what they wish to say into a form, click “post this,” and the new post is automatically placed on the web site.  No fuss, no muss.  All posts are arranged by date and category within themes that users can choose and customize.

B2Evolution works well for those who are old hats at blogging as well as IT professionals.  It allows for multiple blogs, full user management, internationalization, and more.  The program utilizes PHP  and MySQL and is stable in its latest release.

Features

B2Evolution comes stocked with many great features.

First and foremost, it is one of few blogging software programs freely available that allows for the creation of more than one blog.  Whether it be one or 1000 blogs, B2Evolution can handle it.  As such, multiple users and authors can be created to maintain and administer the program.  Users can be restricted to specific permissions such as read, write, moderate or fully customize one or more blogs.

Statistics are integrated into the program.  Activity graphs clearly indicate referrers, searches, keywords, user log-ins and many other bits of data.

Blogs can be sub-divided into categories and even sub-categories.  This allows users to be able to organize posts by subject or theme.  Posts can even be assigned across more than one category or more than one blog.

B2Evolution is also completely compliant with W3C standards – it is even used by W3C.  The program has an XHTML checker that allows for validation prior to posting included as well.

Extendable

The B2Evolution program can be extended with several hundred plug-ins that cover spam, advertising, widgets and more.  To ensure that no two web sites are exactly alike, there are over a hundred different themes to choose from.  B2Evolution also offers an AdSense plugin for blogs to generate income.

For language extendability, the program current offers language packs in German, French, Russian, Spanish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish and Chinese.  If the language needed is not present, the company provides information on how to translate the program into one’s preferred language.

Final Thoughts

B2Evolution truly is as its web site touts – a multilingual, multi-user, multi-blog program that is easy to use and sure to be an online business favorite.

In a market saturated with content management systems that basically do all the same things, it is important for software vendors to come up with new products that stand out from the rest.  Every other product is advertised as “easy to use”, rarely ever do you see one blatantly catering to webmasters rich in development skills.  A hosted software solution, BitsyBox is proof that the landscape could be changing as this CMS caters to experienced users with features that aim to make life much simpler for the savvy developer.  While the software requires an advanced skill set to maintain, it does offer a great deal of simplicity for site users.

Flexible API

The major selling point of BitsyBox is that it offers an API that allows developers to easily manage their data and programming code.  This hosted API outputs commonly used parse-able formats such as XML and JSON, which spares developers from having to learn a new skill.  BitsyBox also offers support for a PHP 5 client that ties everything together by giving developers the ability to manage the connection, caching and of manipulation of API data.  By simply adding a couple of lines to the code, authorized users can easily update content at their leisure directly from the dashboard.  This PHP client can be downloaded freely and easily incorporated into the BitsyBox framework.

BitsyBox’s API data can also be integrated with iPhone apps and sent to just about any location.  The API offers support for a wide range of technologies, including XML, JSON and PHP, enabling developers to perform their own tweaks and implement new features as needed.  For the most part, the goal of this CMS is the provide a simple way to transform a static website into a dynamic site that developers can make more flexible and one users have an easier time editing.

Robust CDN

BitsyBox users with static image hosting receive a free content delivery network to increase the speed of their site in major browsers around the world.  The CDN is powered by Amazon CloudFront and its extensive global network of servers to enhance the delivery of images to web pages.  The dashboard has been notably improved with enhancements that appeal to the less experienced user.  Features such as sliding windows make sure the content you need is always available, helping users work faster and more efficiently.

Scott Rocher, BitsyBox co-founder, explained that its main competitors are currently, Drupal, WordPress and CushyCMS.  He says that right now, BitsyBox is somewhere between Drupal and WordPress, yet a compelling package that appeals to developers.  Rocher also said that unlike other hosted CMS solutions, BitsyBox does not offer web page creation; just a platform for storing text and photos in a structured manner.

The BitsyBox CMS is available in three flavors.  The free package supports one five-page website and a single users, while the Basic Package is $10 with support for 5 users, up to 20 pages and 500 hits per hour.  Those with more demanding needs can build their own custom package at varying prices.

When looking for a content management system (CMS) to create and manage a web site, there are literally hundreds to choose from.  One that stands out from the crowd due to its ease of use and simple implementation is WordPress.

Installation

The few items that should be checked prior to installation is whether or not PHP and MySQL are installed on the server where the web site resides and whether FTP access is enabled.  WordPress relies on PHP and MySQL in order to work and the site must be accessible via FTP in order to upload files.  Once these items have been attended to, WordPress can be downloaded and unzipped onto the user’s computer (not the web server at this point).  A database must be created on the web server as well as a user with the privileges set to access and utilize this newly created database.  Once the database has been created, the file named wp-config-sample.php needs to be renamed to wp-config.php then opened up and edited to reflect the details of the database previously created.  After the wp-config.php file is saved, the entire folder can then be uploaded to the web site at the root web location.

Configuring and adding

The installation of WordPress is the hard part.  The easy and fun part is configuring and adding to the program.  There are a large number of plugins and themes available to make a web site one of a kind.  Plugins range from statistical gathering to comments to polls and much more.  If there is a need, guaranteed it has already been created as a plugin by someone.  At last count, there are over one thousand themes available at the WordPress site and this number continuously grows.

The WordPress site also has an extensive documentation area that covers installation, upgrading, file and plugin management and much more.  If a question can’t be answered within the documentation area, there is also a forums section overflowing with information from previously asked questions and people who are more than happy to help with wading through the ins and outs of WordPress.

Showcasing

Once the WordPress site is up, running and looking beautiful, WordPress has a “Showcase” section on their web site.  This is a great way to show off a newly created site and gives peers a chance to review and rate different sites.  The Showcase area is also great for inspiration.  Some very beautiful and creative WordPress sites are shown here.

Conclusion

Easy to install, simple and fun to add to and configure, great documentation and forum support, a way to show off new sites and free hosting – WordPress is an excellent choice for managing web site content and building a beautiful new web site.

A quick Google search online for e-commerce solutions will garner a huge number of software solutions available for free or commercial use.  Among the free solutions available, and slowly losing its initial popularity, is osCommerce.  osCommerce is an extensive and quite possibly one of the most thorough out-of-the-box pieces of software you can find.  However, as all-encompassing as it may be, it is in severe need of a major overhaul to place it at the same level as its peers.

How it all began

osCommerce got its start in March of 2000.  Created by Harald Ponce de Leon and originally called “The Exchange Project”, osCommerce quickly began to grow in both initial popularity and capabilities.  The software is created with PHP and uses MySQL for its database core.  It can be installed on any server that utilizes these two pieces of programming.  For the past nine years, the program has been in the development stage.  Officially, as of March 2009, osCommerce released its production ready alpha product.  This release, Merchant V 3.0, includes a template system, an object-oriented backend and the ability to define the administration user name and password upon installation.  To date, the osCommerce site claims over 12,000 online stores currently using their product.

The current problems

While it is a very good and all-encompassing shopping cart program, osCommerce is not without its issues.  Installation of the program by a novice may prove to be a daunting task as a basic knowledge of MySQL as well as other web server technologies should be at the ready.  The default SSL option is initially and automatically set to “no” which is practically an open door to nefarious entities trying to gather secure information on customers.  Adding new shopping cart products is no simple task either – there are several options and features that need to be dealt with before adding in a new product, quite possibly the quickest way to creating a lot of confusion.  When you do have the program installed and your cart up and running with all of its products, adding any additional modules or templating takes quite a bit of work and may end up breaking the core of the program.  Not to mention the creators of the software do explicitly state that additions to the core are not always endorsed.

One of the best ways to avoid a lot of this hassle is to either have a seasoned osCommerce professional install the program for you or, if your web host has this option, have it installed by your hosting company.

Conclusion

If you are in need of a shopping cart program that is capable of being search engine optimized, fully featured and very robust, osCommerce is a good choice.  However, it still needs quite a bit of work in as far as installation and add-on capabilities before it can be considered a simple ecommerce program of choice.  OsCommerce is ideal for the knowledgeable and seasoned web developer, not for the novice nor the faint of heart.