A few weeks ago I highlighted an article by Acquia's VP of Marketing Jeff Whatcott. In it, Jeff came up with a definition of something he calls "social publishing." He described it as a blend of what we currently expect from a web content management system, aspects of online networking such as blogs, wikis and sites like Facebook and YouTube, plus the ability to create web applications using a common framework.

I liked Jeff's terminology then; I like it even better today. For the purposes of this discussion, I include Joomla, Drupal, Plone and other similar software as content management systems and WordPress, Moveable Type and Blogger and their kin as personal publishing, or blogging, platforms. But as open source developers have extended the capabilities of these packages, they are coming closer to each other's niche markets.

Plenty of bloggers are using CMS software to run their blogs; New Tech Heroes is just one of many sites that are primarily blog-driven using Drupal in that way. With the modules and extensions available for WordPress today, and more expected when version 2.5 is introduced, it's more than just a blog platform now. Is it a CMS yet? Does it matter?

Bryan Ruby examined the "social publishing" terminology on his CMSReport blog last Thursday. Noting that we're now dealing with "something more than a CMS," Bryan writes:

What do you call a Web application capable of publishing and managing not only content, but is an application that also manages wikis, social networking, documents, forums, photos, and blogs? Some people will tell you these diverse features are best described under such terms as social software, Web 2.0, social networking, and Enterprise 2.0. While these terms may help create a lot of buzz, I have some difficulty in using these terms to describe the information system model being used by the applications. If you think the definition of a CMS can be a fuzzy or limiting term, wait until you start using the term "social software" in a business setting. Personally, I don't think my boss is in the mood to deal with such vague terms.

The imprecision of terms does make selling this technology difficult to our employers and clients. Not only is "content management" difficult to define for them, the whole idea that there's any "content" to "manage" is baffling to many decision makers. Don't we just want a web page? Haven't we progressed enough if we get that far? Now we're supposed to be "social," too?

It reminds me of the rise of "desktop publishing" twenty years ago. Large print shops hated the term - and the technology - because it implied anyone could do what they'd been doing with their big Linotype machines and composition tables for years. (The fact that not anyone could actually do good layout work became apparent soon enough. I still see brochures laid out using Microsoft Publisher that feature eight or more fonts.) Yet we needed some term back then to describe what PageMaker could do, and desktop publishing did the trick. Interestingly, you rarely hear the term "desktop publishing" anymore, because now everyone - including the big print shops - does layout work on computers now.

So maybe in the long run it won't matter with social publishing, either. For now, though, it seems like we need to have a term that describes this evolving type of software that's driving how individuals, businesses and organizations are communicating in 2008. "Social publishing" works for me. What do you think?

There's another killer on the loose. Who's the target this time? Sharepoint again? If the bullet misses the target, though, will open source CMS platforms get caught in the crossfire?

Since 2005, the following products have been described as a "Sharepoint killer:" Oracle Workspaces 10g, Groove (even after being obtained by Microsoft - apparently it was supposed to be an inside job), Alfresco, CPS Project, O3Spaces, Lotus Quickr, Google Apps Team Edition (just 19 days ago) and, today, Google Sites. Google Enterprise product management director Matthew Glotzbach fingered Google Sites as a "Sharepoint killer" today when it launched, according to Michael Arrington on TechCrunch.

I played with Google Sites for awhile this morning. It's not bad at all, though a bit buggy, as Dennis Howlett describes on ZDNet today. It looks like a slightly more sophisticated Google Page Creator. It doesn't suck, but as a killer, it's a little light on the firepower. Let's say it looks like Sharepoint can walk down dark alleys without any concern about an ambush. But does Google Sites have enough functionality to affect the market for open source CMS platforms?

CMS software alternatives come in three general flavors: traditional proprietary solutions (Microsoft Sharepoint and others), open source solutions (Joomla!, Drupal, Plone, etc.) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions (Google Sites, wetpaint, Ning and yesterday's newcomer BricaBox, among many others). Businesses looking to create or improve their online presence don't know or care about these distinctions. They want at least a simple website, maybe add some cool bells and whistles like they've seen on bigger sites - and they don't want to pay a lot of money for it.

Is something like Google Sites or BricaBox the answer for those users? Maybe. If the business isn't looking to spend much money on the site and they don't have the time to learn how to set up a hosted CMS site themselves, I'd even say probably. But many businesses will need a greater ability to customize and add features than Google Sites will be able to provide in the near future, and it's in that market that the open source CMS solutions, and the designers and developers who provide support for them, will continue to have the greatest potential.

If they were really looking to be a Sharepoint killer today, I'd say Google Sites came equipped for a gunfight with a jackknife. Not much of a killer - yet. If it continues to improve, Google Sites may eventually become a challenger to more complete CMS solutions, even Sharepoint. But for today: put down the knife, Google, and get back to work.

Trend Micro's Juan Castro reports today that a vulnerability in Plone, discovered in November 2007 by AusCERT, has cropped up on a number of sites. The exploit uses a technique called "Doorway Pages" and redirects visitors to pages that then download malware to the visitor's computer. Castro's analysis is that someone is using the vulnerability discovered by AusCERT as a redirector to hijack traffic and possibly infect computers.

The vulnerability was addressed in Plone's version 3.0.3 and legacy version 2.5.5. If you're using Plone for any of your CMS-based websites, make sure your installation is patched to the current version, which is 3.0.6, or to the latest legacy version, which is 2.5.5.

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