The latest generation of Web development involves tools such as the one used for managing this Web log. Although many pages continue to be composed in the level of raw HTML code or using What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tools, their days appear numbered. Quite simply, both are antiquated methods of composing for the Web since development is usually done at the remote end — the user’s end. Both content and tools (software) reside on the user’s side. Content then needs to be transferred to the Web server and software is not guaranteed to work on any platform.

In the past few years, many free content management systems (CMS’s) have emerged. They typically re-use GPL‘d components for a more rapid development process, which is the power of Open Source. The result is the existence of many packages and some prominent ones are listed below:

• WordPress is a blogging tool which has recently stretched towards becoming a fully-blown CMS. It powers this section of the site as well as Harvey Tobkes
• Plone, which is highly popular
• PHP-Nuke (and PostNuke) that run The Computer Vision Digest and MARS.
• Drupal, a highly-motivated team that grows rapidly
• Mambo which is very popular among Linux users

There is no “best tool” as it all depends on the task in question and the nature of the Web site to be built. However, Plone is very mature, WordPress is highly user-friendly and PHP-Nuke is versatile. The best thing to do is visit the sites and view demonstrative flagship sites that run on each CMS package. A quick glance will give all the impression that is needed.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 3:58 am and is filed under Internet, Linux, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.