[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.