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A Closer Look at PHPCow

PHPCow is one of the many open-source content management systems powered by the widely used PHP language. This particular CMS is geared more towards users who want to create online magazines, newspapers, and news portals.  PHPCow offers the promise of being able to design and manage your content-rich site in simple drag-and-drop fashion, requiring no experience in XML, CSS or PHP.

Key Features

PHPCow trumps the competition with a host of great features.  There is actually too much to cover, but are some of the features that stand out the most:

Template Manager – PHPCow gives users control over the look and feel of their site with a flexible template engine.  This is made possible by an intuitive Block Handling System that allows for deeper customization of the page layout.  While the template system lets you get very imaginative with your design, users also have the option to choose from a variety of free pre-designed templates.

Article Management – Users can customize their articles with attachments, slide shows, images and much more.  PHPCow’s article management module includes a built-in WYSIWYG editor that enables simple editing on the fly.  If you can use simple word processing applications like Microsoft Word, then you can excel with this user-friendly HTML editor.  You have the luxury to filter content by author, article type, and category, along with powerful visualization features for rendering your filtered content.

Content Syndication – PHPCow offers a way to increase your readership and search engine rankings with efficient content syndication.  The software includes an RSS Generator for creating RSS and Atom Feeds, something that can be done with a few easy clicks of the mouse from the administrative control panel.  You also have the ability to import and export RSS feeds from other sites, indication that PHPCow covers just about every critical aspect of content syndication.

Dynamic Menu Management - PHPCow allows users to customize dynamic menus, a feature that works hand in hand with its built-in category management module.  The system gives you complete authority over menu properties, letting you arrange horizontally or vertically, split menus, and even rebuild on the fly with a simple click.  PHPCow also allows you to create partial menus with different formats that can be displayed on individual pages opposed to the entire website.

PHPCow Requirements

For the most part, PHPCow has the same requirements of any PHP-based CMS.  It calls for an Apache web server, but can run on a Linux, Unix or Windows operating system.  The software also requires a MySQL 5.0 database.  Perhaps the most important requirements relate to the server configuration.  In order to get an optimal performance out of PHPCow, you will need a server equipped with the GDLibrary module and the latest version of the Zend Optimizer among other components.

Conclusion

PHPCow offers an arsenal of great features.  Aside from what has been mentioned here, there is also a built-in voting system, archiving, search functionality and bread crumb navigation.  The software appears to live up to its claims of ease of use and seems a little more capable than many of its open-source competitors.  Keep in mind that PHPCow is a not a free CMS and that a license will cost you at least $100.

CMS Made Simple Content Management System

A man who gave up working in his father’s metal shop to building a good, solid content management system, Ted Kulp has been actively developing and tweaking CMS Made Simple for over five years.  Since its early beginnings, CMS Made Simple has grown from one man to a team of over ten developers who’s passion shows in their commitment to this product.  While not showing as a top open source CMS program contender, this piece of software has a lot to offer and is slowly growing in popularity.

Features

CMS Made Simple offers quite a few features.  SEO friendly URLs is at the top of the list and is a refreshing change from the standard CMS URLs that require a bit of fancy programming or modification to work with the major search engines.

There are a number of integrated features making this product an excellent choice – help, file manager with upload capabilities and an audit log.  User and group management are included as well as a group-based permission system.

CMS Made Simple allows for a unique web site design with the ability to change templates with ease.  The included admin panel is not only available in English but supports many other languages as well.  The program also boasts several extra features available with add-on modules – WYSIWYG, polls, blogging and calendar add-ons are just a few offered.

Support

The CMS Made Simple web site offers several avenues for support should the need arise.  Full documentation is available online as well as an FAQ, user forum, mailing list and an IRC chat channel.  If this isn’t enough, the company also offers a direct e-mail connection to a developer to have support issues handled when all other support routes fail to garner a user the answer they need.

The development side of this company’s web site allows users to report bugs and request features – a nice addition for regular uses of this CMS program.  This area also shows current releases and a roadmap to future developments of the software.

Beyond software

Going beyond simply producing and offering a CMS solution, CMS Made Simple also offers professional services for developers needing more assistance or something more than just what the program offers.  Among these services are support contracts purchased on a per-site basis, software development to help with solutions outside the standard program and the ability to contract one of the company’s developers for large projects.

Testimonials

As with any open source CMS program that may not be as popular as the biggies on the market, knowing that the product is stable and used by others is important.  The CMS Made Simple web site lists out many satisfied customers with complete testimonials regarding the product.  This web page shows the product is easy to use and is well-liked by many web professionals and business owners.

Final Thoughts

It definitely isn’t one of the more well-known open source content management systems out on the web but it is slowly growing in popularity.  CMS Made Simple is exactly that – an easy to use open source content management system.  This CMS program is worth checking out.

A New CMS for ASP.NET Lovers

The market for ASP.NET CMS products is expanding rapidly.  Users now have another option for blending content management and the power of ASP.NET with Webaptive.  Just released by developer Striquent, Webaptive is an enterprise CMS available in premium and community versions.  The biggest draw to this program is its ability to incorporate content management functionality into existing applications without the implementation of third-party software development kits.  This is made possible by the presence of IIS and the stack of Microsoft .NET technologies.

Creating ASP.NET Applications

Webaptive works closely with the web server to add CMS functionality to your applications.  From within IIS, you can choose the application you want to enhance. Once you make your selection and a database is automatically created, you can then enable existing applications or develop new ones.  Because the method in which Webaptive associates itself with applications is specific to the ASP.NET framework, it is strongly recommend that you create your pages and applications using standard ASP.NET programming practices.

CMS Features

Though rich in ASP.NET functionality, Webaptive offers many of the same capabilities found in other CMS products.  For instance, it has a built-in WYSIWYG editor for easily creating articles and blog posts, a CSS editing facility, and support for multiple authors.  Some of its more advanced features include localization and campaign management as well content inheritance options for managers and administrators.  Another unique quality of Webaptive its seamless integration with Perifigure, Striquent’s sister product.  Perfigure is a powerful analytic tool that analyzes site performance and provides detailed statistics on traffic, marketing campaigns and several other business related activities.  These capabilities alone make Webaptive a very attractive CMS for business users.

Standing Alongside and Out from the Crowd

Marketed as a CMSaaS product, Webaptive shares a few qualities with similar hosted SaaS CMS solutions such as CushyCMS and Surreal CMS.  Many of these platforms work by mildly blending content management features into a web page or website.  Though effective for the most part, they are not all that intrusive in regard to the core technologies and as a result, only provide limited CMS functionality.  Although Webaptive performs in a similar manner, it goes beyond the basics by digging into the code at the ASP.NET application level.  This gives it the ability to interact with ASP.NET controls as well as the standard HTML elements.  When all components are properly configured, this CMS can truly help you take your web applications to the next level.  Another difference is that whereas most SaaS CMS platforms are hosted solutions, Webaptive can be downloaded, installed and configured on your own server.

Availability and System Requirements

The Webaptive CMS is currently available in three versions: Community, Express and Enterprise editions.  In terms of functionality, the Community and Express versions are nearly identical.  However, the community version is free and therefore does not come included with reliable technical support.  The Enterprise edition is the most powerful version of the product as it is equipped with many advanced back-end versions and of course, paid support.  In order to run Webaptive, you will need the Windows Server 2003 operating system or higher and an SQL Server database.  These elements are needed to support your ASP.NET applications and web pages.

Textpattern: The Text-Friendly CMS

In World Wide Web years, TextPattern is a mature CMS that has been around in alpha and beta versions since 2001 and finally distributed under the GNU GPL in 2004.  The product has been dramatically improved over the years and the most notable enhancements yet can be seen in the latest version release, TextPattern 4.20.  If you need an easier and more efficient way to manage your content, the features of this open-source CMS tool may be of interest.

Word Processing-Like Environment

One of Textpattern’s key features is Textile, an intuitive syntax that allows you to easily convert plaintext into well structured rich web content.  Often nagging elements such as hyperlinks, tables and image tags can be created with one or two markers, making it closer to working with ordinary text as opposed to complex code.  When you are ready to publish your content, Textile takes all marked copy and automatically converts it to clean, valid XHTML.  In addition, all articles you compose in Textpattern can be viewed in plaintext, XHTML or a rendered preview.

Versatile CSS Editing

Textpattern offers full support for CSS, offering two modes that allow you to customize and enhance the presentation of your site in different ways.  Manual CSS mode lets you to create or edit any CSS data directly from the administrative interface.  This enables you to quickly edit styles without dealing with the hassle that often results from uploading via FTP.  You can create your style sheets from scratch or by using one of many compatible WYSIWYG editors.  Automatic CSS mode is an advanced feature that utilizes an organized interface to make CSS parameters more comprehensive and manageable.  CSS can really enhance the performance of a website and Textpattern allows you to harness all the power of this optimal design technology.

Link Friendly

There are quite a few CMS tools that offer power and ease of use, but lack the features needed to easily increase visibility via the search engines.  This isn’t the case with TextPattern as the software excels in SEO-friendly pages and link management.  You can store an unlimited number of links in an unlimited number of categories anywhere you want on your site.  It also makes it simple to add news links through the built-in editor or a Javascript book marklet, which displays a popup window to use where ever you may be on the web.

Add-on Functionality

Although Textpattern is not supported by nearly as many plugins as open-source products like Joomla and Drupal, the platform is very extensible.  All available add-on components can be installed and maintained in a straightforward manner.  Once you have incorporated them, they can be easily enabled or disabled through the administrative interface where you can also access help and parameters used by supported plugins.

Conclusion

Textpattern is an open-source CMS product that is free to download and use.  The software requires PHP 4.3 or higher, MySQL 3.23 or higher and the Apache web server.  Its developer also strongly recommends the use of a Unix operating system, although it states that the software will “probably” work on any platform that supports PHP.  Being a free and user-friendly tool, you may want to check your system requirements and give Textpattern a test drive to see if it meets your needs before giving up your preferred CMS.

Simplified Content Management with CMS Made Simple

CMS tools are quickly replacing traditional web design and management utilities.  These software applications are robust and offer far more capabilities than your typical site builder.  Most CMS applications are usually dubbed as “easy to use” but in actuality, that is always up for debate.  Even systems like the world renown Joomla and Drupal especially, can be more than a handful.  You can find yourself in a jam when the community isn’t providing the level of support you need, which is often a harsh reality on the open-source market.  Unlike many others, one CMS that lives up to its name is an intuitive software package called CMS Made Simple.

What is CMS Made Simple?

CMS Made Simple is an open-source content management system that takes the complexity out of the management aspects.  The name says it all.  The platform is easy to install, set up and maintain.  Thanks to a user-friendly interface, managing all of your content is made simple, allowing you to save time by working more efficiently.  CMS Made Simple offers a unique ability that lets you create and run multiple websites while maintaining the content of each one independently.  Instead of spending time wrecking your brain on trying to figure out how the software is supposed to work, you can walk through a short learning curve and get your projects done much faster.  These are a few of many qualities bundled in CMS Made Simple.

Instant Search Engine Appeal

Before deciding on an CMS, it is good idea to research and find out how the software ranks in terms of SEO .  If visibility matters to you, it is important to go with a platform that is capable of generating URLs that appeal to search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  Even the mighty Joomla platform has its shortcomings in this regard.  In order to create your pages in a search engine-friendly manner, you have to install add-on modules, which presents more complexity to the inexperienced user.  CMS Made Simple has you covered from an SEO aspect by enabling the easy creation of search engine-friendly web pages to keep the spiders crawling to your site.  With this CMS, there is no need to install any add-on modules that may or may not work correctly.  This factor alone gives CMS Made Simple a huge advantage over some of the most highly touted open-source programs.

Additional Features and Capabilities

CMS Made Simple offers a fast and simple way to create a content-rich website and effectively manage all of its key components  Although most of the tools you need to integrate blogs, polls, and forums are available by default, this CMS is fully modular and highly extensible.   Aside from search engine friendliness right out of the box, the software also provides a facility for easy user and group management, a nice selection of built-in templates, a file manager, WYSIWYG editor, multi-language support and much more

A Simple CMS Choice

CMS Made Simple is light on server resources and runs efficiently with the support of a MySQL database on any server running PHP.  If you are hunting for open-source content management tools, this is one you definitely want to put on your list.