Introducing the phpWebSite CMS
Posted on Wednesday, Apr 01, 2009 in "CMS"
PHP Nuke is responsible for many of today’s popular content management systems and phpWebSite is one of the them. phpWebSite began in 2001 as a fork of the original PHP Nuke CMS. It was released as open-source software under the GNU GPL and LGPL (Lesser General Public Licence), free to use, modify and redistribute. In a very short time, phpWebSite was implemented with functionality that gave the system its own identity apart from PHP Nuke. phpWebSite is now supported by a large community as well as a number of add-on modules that extend its functionality.
Common Usage
The phpWebSite application is mainly used by community groups and for educational purposes. While it is available to the public for other uses, the software’s primary focus is serving staff at Appalachian State University. In fact, phpWebSite was initially designed to make it easier for university staff to create and manage their websites. Over the years, the system has been greatly enhanced with features you will commonly find in other popular content management systems.
phpWebSite Features and Capabilities
PHP is a fully modular, customizable software package, allowing you to install, modify and update numerous components. Its customization is extended through a wide variety of themes and HTML templates. Although phpWebSite extensions typically consist of common features like photo galleries, blogs and bulletin boards, these elements don’t offer the functionality of standalone applications like Coppermine, WordPress and phpBB. Because many of phpWebSite modules are intended for university users, they tend to lack the features you would find in applications such as Joomla or Drupal.
By default, the phpWebSite CMS offers functionality that makes it useful in many situations. Some of its major capabilities include:
Content Creation and Management – phpWebSite’s built-in tools allows administrators and users to create, display and manage content on the system. This includes text, files, images links and other forms of content.
Content Organization and Navigation - With phpWebsite, you can easily organize and present your content in a way that is simple to access and mange.
Communication – phpWebSite is ideal for running a community-based side as the software enables communication through various mediums. This includes email, internal messaging and data interchange among other methods.
Configuration and Administration – As the website administrator, you have the ability to assign administrative privileges to staff and assign other permissions to users. phpWebSite allows you to effectively manage every member within the community.
Development – Because phpWebSite is open-source, anyone can write extensions to enhance the software. The integrated development tools allow you to set permissions for your internal developers to custom build modules for the system.
Presentation – phpWebSite offers a nice mix of pre-designed themes but there are many options for customization. If you are familiar with CSS stylesheets, you can design and incorporate your own templates. If not, there are several themes available on the web, ranging from free to premium.
phpWebSite Requirements
The features and user-friendliness of phpWebSite makes it a good choice for an open-source CMS. In order to get the best out of this software, you will need a server equipped with the Apache web server and PHP programming language. Though the PostgreSQL is supported, MySQL is recommended.
