Content Management System
Content Management Systems
A Content Management System (CMS) is a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative creation of documents and other content. It allows many people to directly contribute to maintaining a web site. See Wikipedia for more background.
The website CMS Matrix allows you to compare features on approximately 100 different CMS solutions. The "Search the Matrix" feature allows you to filter the list according to the features that you need for your site.
The website Open Source CMS Systems allows you to demo approximately 40 to 50 LAMP-based software packages. (LAMP means Linux Apache MySql Php - based).
Plone
Cost: FREE: GPL license
Advantages: Easy to create events, news items, new documents, photos, and other files. It uses both HTML and an easy to use Structured Text for those who are unfamiliar with website design. Has many add-on products that extend features available. Very flexible security/permissions structure allows different people and groups in different roles to have control over different aspects of different parts of the site. Excellent standards compliance and accessibility. URLs are friendly to both users and search engines, rather than being littered with numbers and query strings. Supports syndication via RSS. Runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD etc. Large developer community, and commercial support is available. Under the hood, uses modern object oriented programming concepts implemented in the delightful language Python.
Disadvantages:
- Uses Zope as the web server rather than or in combination with Apache. Steep learning curve for the webmaster. Resource-hungry on the server - requires over 75 MB RAM dedicated to your site which tends to cost from $15 to $40/month.
For more insights, see http://plone.org/documentation/faq/is-plone-for-me
Examples:
- Spindletop Unitarian Church
- Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem
- The Mountain Desert District of the UUA is developing their new site with plone.
To try it out, create your own free site at http://www.objectis.org/ or create your own account at a plone-based community site like http://plone.org/ For more flexible production hosting, you might look at http://zettai.net, http://interlix.com, http://quintagroup.com, or http://imeme.net.
Drupal
Cost: FREE
Advantages: Not dissimilar to Plone but implemented in PHP. Is primarily intended for 'community' web sites where everyone in the community is contributing content (think Slashdot), but is probably well suited to doing a congregational web site as well. Easy to create news items, new documents, etc. Lots of additional modules available. Content can be written in HTML and structured text.
Disadvantages:
- Don't know yet...
Examples:
- Follen Church Society
- If you google "church drupal" you can also find quite a few churchs of other denominations using it.
Mambo/Joomla
Cost: FREE
Advantages: Perhaps the most popular CMS. In mid-2005 the Miro corporation set up a "Mambo Foundation" in an attempt to exert more control via their ownership of the trademark. This was strongly resisted by the Mambo developer community, which left en-masse and are continuing their development using the name "Joomla".
Disdvantages:
Examples: At least one UU congregation posted to the Websters list indicating that they are probably moving to Mambo.
Contentor
Cost: FREE
Advantages: Contentor was designed for small to medium-sized web sites, typical of sites for/by small non-profit corporations or individuals. It was developed by a fellow UU, Earl Daniels.
Disdvantages: Unclear how much usage or support there is.
Examples: