[2/8] Start your own website: Content Management Systems (CMS)

Part 1: Intro

An important part of starting a website is choosing which content management system you are going to use. A content management system is a piece of software which splits the design and the content of your website. In the CMS you can upload and manage your content without having to design every page separately. In the last decade, these systems have become very advanced, but easy to use as well. There are great CMS's around and the biggest distinction between them is whether they are open source or not. Open source software is software which can be improved and shared among developers freely. That's why this software is mostly free of charge, which is of course a huge advantage if you're starting your new business and don't have a lot of money to spend.

In this article I will focus on open source CMS's only. The most used open source CMS's are:

• Wordpress
  
• Joomla
  
• TYPO3
  
• Drupal

I will only discuss Wordpress and Joomla, since I don't have any experience with Drupal, and TYPO3 is too complicated to start with for the first time.

Backend, Frontend

All CMS's work with a backend and a frontend. The frontend is the site which is available to your visitors. This is your website. The backend is the part where you login with your username and password to change settings and upload content. You can make accounts for editors with the right to write articles, upload pictures or change the theme of your site.

Backend of Wordpress (click to enlarge)

Wordpress

Wordpress is the easiest to set up and use, but has less functionality than Joomla. However, for most cases this CMS will be just fine. You don't need to know anything about coding or programming to make it work. When you run the setup you can have an up and running website within 5 minutes. Type in your websitename, tagline, adjust a few settings and you're ready to go! Wordpress has been developed for blogs, so there's a build in comment functionality which works great. The fact that it has been developed for blogs also has its downsides. When you want a completely other website than a blog, it might be difficult to create this, but as I said before in most cases Wordpress will be fine for the average user.

The best part of Wordpress is that there are thousands of plugins for any function you'd like. There are plugins for photo galleries, calendars, contact forms with CAPTCHA protection, you name it and it's available. Even greater is that these plugins are really easy to install. Simply type in the name of the plugin in the search bar in the backend, click install and the plugin is ready to use. Wordpress also works with themes you can install. It is possible to install 10 themes and switch between them to give your site a new look without losing your content. There are thousands of themes available and a lot of these are free to download.

The basic Wordpress template (click to enlarge)

Joomla

Joomla is the most used open source CMS around and it is for a reason. It's well structured and getting better with every update. It's a bit harder to set up, but there is a large community (a Dutch community as well) who can help you if you get stuck. The new and improved version 1.6 has just been released and developers all over the world are reprogramming their plugins (called extensions in Joomla) to make them work in 1.6. Just like in Wordpress these (free) plugins are the biggest advantage of an open source CMS over a closed source CMS. Virtually everything you would want on your website is available.

Joomla backend (click to enlarge)

If there are multiple editors on your site, you can make user groups with different rights. For example, editors can only write content on a certain part of your website or they can be given admin rights to edit everything on your website.

Joomla offers you more control than Wordpress and is more suited for more complicated websites or websites other than blogs. I have used Joomla for a website of a Dutch martial arts union. Because there was no budget I used the basic template and adjusted this to the needs of the organization. There are free templates available for download and more professional looking templates can be bought. Just like in Wordpress, installing and switching templates is easy in the backend of Joomla.

Adjust templates and personalize your website

The next article in this series will be about the design of your website. I will discuss template design and structuring your website. If you have any comments, leave a message below.

The success of Angry Birds

What is it about this highly philosophical game that keeps attracting new players and makes it so succesful that it's now (becoming) available on virtually every gaming platform around? It has been released on iPhone, iPad,  Android, Nintendo Wii, PSP, Nintendo 3DS, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC and has been downloaded 12 million times till December 2010! And this is only the paid version. The free “light” version has been downloaded 30 million times! With an average selling price of €0,79 developer Rovio made an astonishing €6.6 million! 6.6 MILLION EUROS! Besides the selling revenue, the developer is making money with the in game ads. With a total amount of 42 million downloaded copies Rovio is making serious money.

Storyline

For all of you who don't know what I'm talking about.. Here is the full and complete storyline: In Angry Birds you try to catapult birds at pigs. The birds are angry because the pigs have stolen their eggs. C'est ça.

Simplicity is key

I think this “simpleness” is part of the succes. It is accesible and can be played for a few minutes. The storyline is very thin, but the characters are nicely designed. Both the pigs and the birds have different features which can be unlocked throughout the game, which makes it very addictive. When you fail at a level, you can instantly try again. It's not about hardcore gameplay or groundbreaking graphics, it's killing time when you're on the bus to school or waiting for a meeting.

Who still wants to play that big block buster game from last year? But almost everyone can be amused by playing the oldschool Tetris on your Game Boy. It's the simple ideas that last the longest. 

Psychological review

I'm not the first to write about Angry Birds. A lot has been written about it already and psychologist Mel Joseph Ciena explains it as follows: "It gives you the false impression you're competitive and achieving something, but, really, you're achieving at things that are relatively safe and anonymous. It becomes addictive because you get the false impression you are improving as a person. But you are improving at the wrong thing. You're just becoming an expert at a frickin' game."

What do you think explains the success of Angry Birds? Leave a message below.

Start your own professional website in 8 steps

You know how to set up your own Blogger or Facebook page, right? Well, Blogger is great. You can customize your theme and add widgets, but the overall level of control is quite low and you always have a blogspot.com url. If you're starting your own business or want to have a website with more functionality you'll have to look a little further.

In these series of 8 articles I will provide you with the information you need to start your very own professional website. I am not a programmer, HTML or PHP specialist and I could do it and so can you (© Scatman John ;-)). With a bit of time and effort anyone can do it.

The series will be divided into 8 parts which are equally important for starting and running a succesful website.

1. Intro (this part)
2. Content Management Systems (CMS)
3. Design
4. Plugins
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6. Generating content
7. Analytics
8. Attracting visitors with social media

I hope to welcome you again within a few days to read the second part of these series.

Corporate communication and digital media

First of all, welcome to this brand new blog about online marketing, e-commerce, social media, you'll get it, right..? For the course 'Business IT' I have to write about my experiences in my study and gain as much attention as possible.

Of course I think it's fun to write about what interests me, so this will be a testcase for me to see if I can attract more than 100 unique visitors on 1 day. Keep reading and leave a message!

-Sander