Part Two - Popular CMS solutions

Content Management System software is available commercially from several vendors, as well as from many free or open source software (FOSS) communities. The quality of the open source versions, especially the market leaders mentioned in this article, is very good, and using open source has the additional benefit of an collaborative community of programmers working on improvements and bug fixes, often able to respond faster than their commercial rivals. Of course, cost is the advantage many IT managers are interested in when considering open source alternatives, as most of these packages are available free or for a small donation of time or money.

In either case, using a CMS solution, whether commerical or FOSS, saves money in development time and also provides stronger security through the technical support of the software vendor or the collaborative programming community.

Commercial CMS solutions

Inevitably, when discussing commerical software, Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, and it's no different when discussing CMS software. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services are the software giant's approach to not only content management, but also document management and other collaborative workplace functions. It's a large, impressive solution, and the 2007 version added many of the features its Open Source competition already had: blogs, news feeds via RSS, custom content types, polls and more. For many IT professionals specifying a CMS solution, SharePoint is the choice because of its Microsoft pedigree; the old adage that no one ever lost their job by specifying Microsoft is still true at many businesses. That said, there are benefits and drawbacks to using SharePoint as your CMS solution.

Benefits

• It's Microsoft. You may have heard of them.
• Comprehensive content and document management capabilities.
• Consistent look and feel to end users plus excellent integration with Microsoft Office applications.
• Technical support available directly from the vendor.

Drawbacks

• It's Microsoft. I'm sure you've heard of them.
• Hardware and software requirements may be overkill for a small business looking to simply manage an intranet or an interactive web site/business blog.
• Expensive, especially compared to Open Source alternatives.

Microsoft's primary competitor in the comprehensive CMS solution market is IBM's Websphere product. There are also numerous CMS products targeted at specific types of businesses, such as newspapers or healthcare, but those are beyond the scope of this article.

Free or Open Source software (FOSS) solutions

There have been hundreds of Open Source CMS packages written since 2000. Some continue to be updated by a small, fiercely dedicated group of supporters, while many are no longer supported and should be avoided. Like the commercial marketplace, there are Open Source solutions designed for specific business situations, and again I won't be covering those in this article.

After a consolidation of users over the past few years, a handful of Open Source CMS products have risen to the top. Your choice in selecting one of them will be affected by the technical specifics of your web server, because their database and programming language requirements vary. But all of the products listed below are supported by a strong group of users and programmers. General benefits and drawbacks of choosing an Open Source CMS solution are:

Benefits

• The basic functionality needed for an effective content management solution, without additional overhead that may be unnecessary.
• Good scaleability. Open Source CMS solutions are used by individuals, small businesses, newspapers, magazines and large corporations.
• Support of a community of dedicated volunteer programmers. Often bug fixes are patched within hours of the support request.
• Low cost. Often completely free.
• Large number of low-cost or free add-on modules and templates make it easy to customize your site the way you want it without having to do a lot of programming yourself.

Drawbacks

• It's not Microsoft. The fact that Open Source CMS solutions are based on other Open Source software such as Linux, PHP and MySQL instead of Microsoft's equivalents may make it a tough sell in a corporate IT environment.
• Documentation and support by volunteers can be spotty, after all, they're volunteers. When it's good, it can exceed the response you'd get from a big commercial vendor. When it's bad, it's awful.
• Using add-ons from several sources means having to keep track of updates and patches from each of those programmers instead of a single central vendor.
• While not common, the nature of volunteer Open Source means that a project community can be split over a conflict, causing one group to stop supporting the project or "forking" a new version off the original software.

The leading Open Source CMS packages are listed below, along with their current version number and general technical requirements. The groupings are based on my experience with each program and are naturally subjective; your mileage may vary. Your constructive comments may be incorporated into future versions of this article or into separate articles detailing each of the programs listed.

Market leaders

• Drupal. Current version 6.0. Legacy version 5.7. Requires PHP 4.3.5+, MySQL 3.23.17+ (version 6 will require MySQL 4.1+), Apache 1.3+ or IIS 5+
• Joomla! Current version 1.5.1. Legacy version 1.0.15. Requires PHP 4.4.7+, MySQL 3.23.x+, Apache 1.3+.

Others worth considering

• Plone. Current version 3.0.6. Requires Python 2.4.4+, Zope 2.9.8+ with CMF 1.6.4+.
• CMS Made Simple. Current version 1.2.3. Requires PHP 4.3+, MySQL 3.23.x+ or PostgreSQL 7+.
• MODx. Current version 0.9.6.1. Requires PHP 4.3.10+, MySQL 4.1+, Apache.
• SilverStripe. Current version 2.2.1. Requires PHP 5.2+, MySQL 4.1+, Apache 1.3+, Windows 2000+ or MacOS X 10.4+ or Linux/BSD.
• WordPress. Current version 2.3.3. Requires PHP 4.2+, MySQL 4.0+, Apache mod_rewrite module. Hosting also available with no installation required at WordPress.com.

Not quite free but worth a look

• ExpressionEngine. Current version 1.6.2. Requires PHP 4.1+, MySQL 3.23.32+. Free for non-commercial use with no technical support; commercial license $249.95; some add-ons have additional costs.

Part Three - 2008-The Year of the Open Source CMS