WCMS

Executive Summary

Web content management system (WCMS) has become the main stream of the website design standard; because it has powerful content manages abilities. Nowadays, people and corporations are tending to use more specific budget and faster develop time to establish a website.

This assignment is mixed that according to author’s network and website planning working experience for past several years and synthesizes the comments and technological files of famous website-building softwares (tools) around the world. Thus, the whole article will discuss and point out the strength and the weakness of several CMS.

This assignment is divided into four parts; the introductions of popular CMS are around the world, how does the CMS work? Functional difference are with each system and Contrast with each system.

Analysing with Joomla, XOOPS, and PHPNUKE; the main idea is how to select which CMS will be the best choice for designing a website.

A good CMS should be considered by three points:

1. Content managements

2. Visual customer-made

3. Scalability

At the last part of this assignment, open-source resources and GNU limitation will be listed on the bibliography. At appendix part will give the famous website example which use Joomla to show the flexibility of the application.

Table of contents

1. Essay Assignment………………………………………………………………...4

2. List of Bibliography…………………………………………………………….10

• Open-source resource

• Portal site resource

• Forums resource

• E-Commerce resource

• Blog resource

3. Appendix - Joomla CMS website actual example…………………………….12

A “web content management system” (WCMS) is software to help you put content on your web site. There are many content managers. Two popular open-source content managers are Drupal and Joomla. Write a paper comparing and contrasting some of the popular open-source WCMS packages, and suggest which one is best

With Internet rising, the web developers including programmers and visual-designers have no longer used page by page designing and coding. At least few years ago, they had had to design like that. Nowadays, “web content management system” (WCMS or CMS) seems to be more popular and more convenient tools for the web designing. Accompanied by the foam of the Internet and growing again, people and corporations are tend to use more specific budget and faster develop time to establish a website or personal blog. Thus, CMS has become the main stream of the website design standard. However, the widely explanations about CMS are not just the maintain tools of content system. It can be included with forum, Blog and e-Commerce systems.

This assignment will be divided into four parts; the introductions of popular CMS are around the world, how does the CMS work? Functional difference are with each system and Contrast with each system.

First of all, the introductions of popular CMS are around the world. As a website designer, I had used XOOPS and PHPNUKE for building websites. To compare with these two open-source systems, in personal view, these two systems are powerful and complete modularization. There are over 4,000 modules can be afforded for download. Follow steps to install in PHP + MySQL environments. The website can be established in very short time. The same with Drupal and Joomla, they also have these fast develop abilities. According to the author of www.opensourcecms.com, Calvin C. Sov, CMS has been divided with function into portal site, blog, e-Commerce, Groupware, Forums, e-Learning and compounded types with above. For making a website with open-source code systems, the first thing should be considered is its capability. CMS can be arranged by its function into:

• Portal site: PHPNUKE, XOOPS ,Joomla

• Forums：phpBB ,discuz, smf, vbb, ipb

• E-Commerce：osCommerce, phpShop

• Blog：Lifetype, Wordpress, Movable Type

As above, these are all common modularized systems. It’s difficult to tell which the best one is. However, the only way to choose these systems which will fit the need is to try then select one can meet the requirement. It seems to be the only and fastest way.

The reason why these CMS have become popular are it owns the shortest time-consuming, free license fee (open-source), and code separation. In the past day, the process of web design should be planning the prototype, art-design then add-code in the final. Using these CMS can use the “template” for art-design, and just call the function to the suitable place such as Mambo. It has already no doubt to describe building a website equal to design a program using function like C++ but more efficiency and simple.

An example for the CMS which own these characteristics is Joomla.

1. Advanced website technologic application:

Joomla use lots of new website technology such as “website cache tech” which can speed the responding and effecting of website, “RSS broadcast and news reading tech” which is the one of most popular technology, “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)” which is the necessary technology for the search engine easier to find the contents of the website. It will increase the page view to bring the potential bonus and the chance of business.

2. Over thousands plugin and modules:

The developers from over the world have developed and offer their functions and creative ideas to improve Joomla’s integrity. These plugin will be used just like to chick the install button in Microsoft windows. It will automatically create relative databases in Mysql. There is no need to worry about database design. Thus, more corporations choose these CMS to create their own websites. Fast and convenient are the main reasons.

3. Simple and abundant user interface (UI):

UI design was also the most important point during the design process. Joomla has user friendly interface. It makes the people who cannot understand the programming and coding technology easily to establish the website and create their own characteristic. Furthermore, they can easily manage the articles and contents on the website.

4. Highly customer-made and develop-elasticity:

This point perhaps will be the main reason of global user bond of. PHPNUKE and XOOPS should be the elder vision. Although these two systems have template too, however, the template design is still not easy to design and restrict by the block. Customer-made is always the major consideration for customers because there is no one wants to make a website without their style. Through CSS and xml grow up; the efficiency of development is most favorite by programmer and website-designer.

5. Over ten thousand websites around the world had had used Joomla:

Since Mambo 1.0 version, on the earth there are over ten thousand websites had choices Joomla be the coral system such as the official website of Porsche (Brazil), Mitsubishi and Michael Jackson’s website. And there are over 30,000 members of the official Joomla website.
Joomla had also won the prize during these years:

• The open-source personal contribution, 2005 London, England.
(Brian Teeman, the team member of Joomla)

• The best Linux and open-source plan, 2005 London, England.

• The best solution of open-source, 2005 Boston, USA.

• The best software of Linux and open-source, 2004 Magazine of Linux User & Developer

• The best free software plan of 2004, 2004 Magazine of Linux Format.

(Prizes translated from the official Traditional-Chinese Jommla website)

Compare with XOOPS and PHPNUKE, these two systems are stable but not user-friendly, especially during design the “template”. It usually takes more time to arrange properly. The latest version 2.3.2b of XOOPS has huge improvement with the manage system’s UI; however, the coral had been fixed too many bugs to adjust the elders. As a result, lots of older modules would not suit for the new version of XOOPS. This is one of issue about XOOPS.

It is hard to say which one will be the best, again, as a website planner. Different types of business, different customer requirement; these questions will always be around the web designers. There are three main consider points to make decision of choosing which CMS will be suitable for the limit budget, time, and highly customer-made.

1. Content managements:

The menu structures have been well organizations whenever there are multi-level menu structures. The structures could be used in searching, sorting, and up-to-date. The structure and contents can be easily added, moved, edited and inserted. A well menu structure content manage system should own these identities. This session will be a very important point for considerations. Once the project finished, it can let customers maintain the contents by theirselves without long period time of training.

2. Visual customer-made:

The CMS should also have the abilities using html editor to help designers doing page arrangements without the programming background. Faster the whole processes proceed.

Sometimes, the highly customer-made is an essential element to fit the CI of customer need. Hence, designers can be free to design the layout of the whole web-pages without been limitation for the block, programmers can insert the URLS into the proper place as usual. This is the most weakness of XOOPS, os-Commerce and phpBB.

3. Scalability:

For the future consideration, the scalability should always stay in the highly priority. With the time of the website maintainability, customers will require the updated functions and add new elements to the website. This is the reason that web planner would like use theirselves programming to fit this requirement instead of using CMS in the past period. Nowadays, the scalability for the most developers of CMS has been focus on this point. They know it clear but no one can promise the scalability will be 100% suitable for every website users and customers’ need. As a result, how to choice a good CMS for customers would be depended on the business type of customers. It would be the biggest challenge of web-planners because there are not every customer would like re-pay the money for the website rebuilding. But this issue was annoying with customers during the past period of fixed layout designing.

Also, the designs of database structure were difficult for using more than one CMS systems such as XOOPS plus os-Commerce. The tough point came from data transfer and the hierarchy permission of members. It took lots of time to fixed every table included extend more columns and data types. This was like a nightmare of using combing CMS. It took very long time to avoid using CMS to establish customers’ websites.

Furthermore, multi-language website would be another important consideration of using CMS. Not only just because CMS could not support multi-language but also the encoding language of html would affect the code of database such as the transfer between Big-5 and GB. To overcome these problems, nowadays, most websites would use UTF-8 instead of original encoding language systems.

For the conclusion, to be a successful web planner, it should not take risks to decide which CMS can be used without real testing. The responsibility for customers would be taking their marketing needs. It is not a theory instead of heavy and real burden. However, after comparing these specifications and sample temples of CMS, Joomla seems to be a better choice because it owns advanced website technologic applications, simple and abundant user interface, highly customer-made and develop-elasticity and powerful scalability. It should be real tested sooner in the future.

List of Bibliography:

Open-source resource:

1. The GNU official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.gnu.org/

2. Open Source Matters official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://opensourcematters.org/

3. OpenSourceCMS official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.opensourcecms.com/

4. OpenSourceCMS - php official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://php.opensourcecms.com/

5. CommercialCMS official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.commercialcms.com/

Portal site resource:

1. The Mambo official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.mambocommunities.com/

2. Drupal official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://drupal.org/

3. Drupal Taiwan official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://drupaltaiwan.org/

4. Joomla Taiwan official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.joomla.org.tw/

5. Joomla official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.joomla.org

6. XOOPS official website Retrieved 24 January 2009 from http://www.xoops.org/

7. PHP-NUKE official website Retrieved 24 January 2009 from http://phpnuke.org/

Forums resource:

1. PHPBB official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.phpbb.com/

2. Discuz official website Retrieved 22 January 2009 from http://www.discuz.net/

3. Vbb official website Retrieved 22 January 2009 from http://www.vbbonline.de/start.php?id_language=2

4. Simple Machines official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.simplemachines.org/

5. Invision Power Services official website Retrieved 19 January 2009 from http://www.invisionpower.com/community/board/index.html

E-Commerce resource:

1. osCommerce official website Retrieved 22 January 2009 from http://www.oscommerce.com/

2. phpShop official website Retrieved 22 January 2009 from http://www.phpshop.org/

Blog resource:

6. Lifetype official website Retrieved 23 January 2009 from http://lifetype.net/

7. Wordpress official website Retrieved 24January 2009 from http://wordpress.org/

8. Movable Type official website Retrieved 24 January 2009 from http://www.movabletype.org/

Appendix - Joomla CMS website actual example:

Porsche Brazil http://www.porsche.com.br/

Mitsubishi official website http://www.mitsubishi.com/

Michael Jackson Official Website http://www.michaeljackson.com/