Office applications Toolkit

Choosing an open source content management system

Tags:
Postnuke,
Content Management Systems,
Cms,
PHP Nuke

Sean Michael Kerner, Builder.com Builder.com

Published: 02 May 2003 10:55 BST

Last year, Builder.com columnist Shelly Doll wrote an article titled "Will open source finally kill off the $1.2m CMS money pit?" The article prodded me to learn more about open source CMSs and to see what options they offer and what level of support is available.

I began my open source CMS exploration the wrong way, with insufficient preparation. Before downloading, installing, configuring, and testing an open source CMS, it's important to have a roadmap of the features you need, including the license, level of support, and security features.

OSCOM lists 11 content management frameworks and 27 content management systems. Cmsinfo lists at least 64 CMS systems.

Licensing
Open source doesn't always mean free. Some licenses allow noncommercial use of software for free; others (such as GPL) are free but require you to list the original copyright; otherwise, you must buy a license. Think about your application and then choose the option that's most cost effective for your needs.

When evaluating what tool makes sense, also consider how the CMS will be used and who the end users will be. The way the CMS is used will be the key to how you are allowed to use it according to the base license.

Support
Open source products feature a wide variety of support mechanisms. For instance, PHPNuke and its derivatives have no commercial support, but the user and developer communities are so large that community support is pretty solid. However, the nature of the project and your installation may require a more traditional support, such as incident-based trouble tickets.

I recommend that you take a look at the support mechanisms and make sure that you're comfortable with them. No matter what CMS you choose, you'll most likely run into some kind of trouble. Unless you feel like debugging the code from scratch yourself, support is critical to the success of your implementation.

Table A outlines the platform and languages for some popular open source CMSs.

CMS	OS	Language	Database	Licence
OpenCMS	Any	Java 1.3+	MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL	GNU General Public License (GPL)
PHPNuke	Linux/Unix	PHP	MySQL, Postgre, mSQL, Interbase, Sybase	GNU General Public License (GPL)
PostNuke	Any	PHP	MySQL, Postgre, mSQL, Interbase, Sybase	GNU General Public License (GPL)
EzPublish	Linux/Unix	PHP	Any SQL database	GPL or commercial (two licences available)
WebGUI	Any	Perl 5.6+	MySQL, Postgre	GNU General Public License (GPL)

Customisation
Customisation features are a huge issue with open source CMS systems, whether you need to customize the theme (graphics, layout, style sheets, etc.) or the functionality of the system itself. Is your application out of the box or is it specialized?

PHPNuke, for instance, has a relatively rigid layout, which makes it easy for a rapid install. Changing the layout isn't easy, but a number of good resources are dedicated to that issue. When looking at the customisability of the various CMS offerings, think about how you want your end product to look and function. Can you easily modify layout, modules, and functionality? Look at how you would go about making customizations to the CMS and include the process in your testing methodology.

Security
As with any software system these days, security is always an issue. Some of the open source content management systems (PostNuke, for example) have active developer segments that concentrate on security alone. Others seem oblivious to it. Make sure that whatever CMS implementation you use conforms to your overall security framework and does not compromise the rest of your efforts.

PostNuke was the only open source CMS (GPL) I tried that had a dedicated security team looking at security issues without requiring me to shell out for commercial support. Most likely, commercial support for the other solutions includes regular security updates and patches.

Size them up
Table B summarizes the support, customizability, and security features of various open source content management systems.

CMS	Support	Customisability	Security
OpenCMS	Commercial support	Current version has relatively limited Web-based style/template management capabilities	Does not suport LDAP but offer a content approval mechanism that most of the other open source CMS systems don't seem to have
PHPNuke	Nuke4newbies.org	Lots of add-on modules available from community; not very flexible to customise design and layout	Rules-base authentication; add-on modules can extend security
PostNuke	Same as above and support.postnuke.com	More flexible than PHPNuke and compatible with many of the same add-ons and modules	The only open-source CMS site I found that had security listed front and centre; notices and patches are rapidly deployed
EzPublish	Commercial support	Unlike PHPNuke, it is very flexible in terms of changing cesign and layout; hard to customise content types	Roles-based authentication
WebGUI	Commercial support	WYWIWYG Editor with flexible design and content structure	Offers LDAP support, login history, and session management

Try them out
Once you've narrowed down the field and decided which CMS solutions may be appropriate for your requirements, it's time to try them out for yourself. When I started to test various systems, I did it the hard way: I downloaded them to my test box running the same environment as I expected to have on the live server.

Since then, I've found a simpler method to test drive some of the CMS systems. Opensourcecms lets you try out 41 CMS implementations from their respective Admin screens. (I found a separate WebGui demo at demo.Plainblack.com.)

Of course, there's no substitute for testing in your own environment. If you're going to use it, you've got to abuse it and see how it holds up. If you don't, you can bet that your users will.