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Meet the CMS Lineup

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Art
Art
Web Hosting Geek

A content management system or CMS, is a program many developers use to create and edit web pages.  This can all be done on-the-fly as it is essentially an application driven by a database such as MySQL or Postgre SQL.  The major reason why these systems have become so popular is because most of them are open-source and free to use.  A powerful CMS will allow you to create and manage a website with ease from any computer able to establish an internet connection.  Most of them support various add-ons which allow you to extend the system and give it greater functionality.  These systems are known for providing numerous templates to help you design your site and tend to be comprehensive enough for beginners.

Choosing a CMS for Your Website

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Choosing a CMS can be easy or difficult which all depends on the requirements of your website.  If your requirements are relatively simple then any major software should be able to get the job done.  For instance, if you are trying to determine if a particular application supports a specific operating system or XHTML then your search should be fairly easy.  There are many systems that support virtually any platform and allow you to create custom templates that are XHTML compliant.  On the other hand, if your site requires something more demanding, you may have to purchase a commercial solution or search long and hard for an open-source solution that meets those requirements.

There are other factors that also need to be taken into consideration, many of which are universal.  For example, regardless of what your plans are, you want a CMS that is secure and SEO-friendly.  An SEO friendly system will convert your pages into optimized URLs for the search engines like Google or Yahoo, thus increasing your chance of receiving higher rankings.

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The more important factor to consider is security, something that often gets overshadowed in the midst of a system’s features.  Because most content management systems are open-source, they tend to be less secure than commercial products.  This is due in large part to the fact that anyone can gain access to them, even hackers.  These systems have a reputation for being exploited and have lead some to target vulnerable websites and compromise sensitive data.  One of the most common exploits is called an SQL injection, an attack that is fairly easy to execute on an open-source CMS.

Recommendations

To make your search a little easier, we have listed some of the most widely used content management systems.  These programs are largely supported by developers and users and capable of producing excellent results.

  • Joomla
  • Drupal
  • Mambo
  • PHP-Nuke
  • Xoops
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While a CMS is very useful, they are not suited for everyone.  You should only use such a system if your content requires frequent updates or if you run a large site that is heavy with content.  If your website is small then using a CMS would not serve many benefits.  In fact, it could make your job as a webmaster more complex in certain situations.

Comments

2 Comments

  • Avatar maglie calcio poco prezzo says:

    You’ve gotten the most impressive web sites.

  • Avatar Dan says:

    The claim that being open source makes them more vulnerable to attack is questionable. Can you point to evidence that this is the case? It is much more likely that popularity makes a product a target.

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