Common Content Management Systems(CMS)

There are many types of Content Management Systems available, with most being designed to fit a general need or niche.

Some common types of content management systems include a blogging platform, which is designed for blogs and smaller sites or a community based forum, which provides a place where users can discuss a number of topics.

For businesses that sell things online, a shopping cart is needed, which provides tools for managing products and making purchases online.

It is also common to see CMSes bridge the gap between personal website and business website, for example many blogging platforms are able to be used as a business website with a little adaption. This often requires that the CMS have a quality custom website design, by someone who is familiar with the themeing agent used by the CMS, like Raleigh Computer Repair.

There are many popular content management systems, but a few of the more common ones are described below.

In the past when making a website, it was common to simply use plain text files. However, this could make updating the website very difficult, especially if a change needed to be made on all pages on the site.

A content management system, on the other hand, allows the user to quickly and easily make an edit to their website. Since most are database driven, it is also possible to quickly update all pages at once. Themes are also employed, so changing things like the footer for the entire website can be done in a single file, as opposed to making the change on each individual page.

Wordpress was first released in 2003 and intended to be used as a blogging platform. It is based in PHP and mysql and offers a very customizable and relatively easy to use plugin and template engine, based on an Open-Source software model.

Since its release, Wordpress has grown to be the most popular CMS and is widely used for many types of websites.

It has expanded to be much more than just a blogging platform and can be converted easily for commercial use. There is also a wide variety of themes and plugins available, which can be used to easily add things like online forms or polls.

Joomla was first released in 2005, although it was based on a much older Open Source Project called Mambo, which was initially released in 2001.

It is designed to be a publishing platform, suitible for publishing articles on both websites and across intranets. A big portion of Joomla is based around providing a user-based portal, to easily allow different users to add and update content.

Joomla is not generally designed to be a blogging platform, but it can be adapted for this use. However, it is more often used in a commercial settings. Like Wordpress, Joomla is based in PHP and Mysql, however it is not as simple and easy to use as Wordpress.

Magento is a shopping cart and ecommerce system, which provides the tools needed to manage and administrate an online store. While the community version of Magento is Open-Source, a Professional and Enterprise version is also available, which offer more advanced features. The company that produces Magento also offers a number of support packages.

The Community Version of Magento provides a very powerful shopping cart system and many stores find it to be adequate for their needs. It provides customer management, product management, and integration with many credit card merchants, including Google Checkout, Authorize.net, and Paypal.

From a support standpoint, the community edition does leave something to be desired. Many businesses specialize in Magento Themes and plugins, so a number of the resources that might be available for free with a CMS like Wordpress are paid options in Magenoto.

Magento to sell plugins and extensions, allowing third-party individuals to buy and sell them on their website.

Vbulliten is a forum software, based in PHP and Mysql. Unlike the Joomla and Wordpress, it is not Open Source and instead requires that the user purchases a license to use it. Vbulliten was first released in 2000, as the software used to power a popular Virtual Basic website.

Today, it is widely used on forums and offers a very customizable and powerful tool for those wishing to start an Internet Forum. While most of the releases have been stable, some criticize it as being rushed to releases, in order to meet stated deadlines.

phpBB is a forum software, which was released in 2000 and provides an Open-Source alternative to using Vbulliten. While still actively developed, phpBB has slower release dates, with the last stable version released in July of this year.

A number of security issues during 2004 and 2005 were found in phpBB and several issues with the captcha system, which is designed to prevent users from registering automatically, were present. However, version 3.0 have improved most of these issues.