Many marketers cringe when the topic turns to web technologies and all the jargon that comes along with it: XML, APIs, JavaScript, JavaBeans, SQL, PHP, blah, blah, blah. While it may all sound impenetrable, marketers should get to know and love this simple phrase: open source content management system, also known as open source CMS. Why? Because using an open source CMS will give you extraordinary freedom to manage marketing programs on your website and significant value in terms of efficiency and cost savings.
Most commercial websites use a content management system to enable site owners to add and maintain content (copy, headers, forms, images, etc.) using a simple editing tools. These tools are similar to a word processor, require no advanced HTML or programming skills, and help organize the extensive amount of content found in a typical website. The open source movement has led to the development of many CMS solutions that rival their proprietary counterparts in terms of features and functionality, while providing easier, faster deployment and significant cost savings.
Many of these websites built over the past decade use proprietary, commercial content management systems (CMS), such as Autonomy’s Interwoven and Microsoft’s CMS. Not only are such systems expensive, but they can be difficult to maintain without paid support from their vendors, and add-on options can be limited. Therefore, companies both large and small are increasingly migrating to free open source CMS platforms. The cost savings may be obvious, but what is less obvious is the potential increase in maintainability and extensibility. These systems allow for daily content changes, instant corrections, easy link management, access from any location with an internet connection and different levels of user access.
The more popular open source content management systems have a large community of vendors and expert service providers, a wide array of freely available plug-ins, and extensive online documentation and discussion that can help answer technical questions. While Red Bricks Media has worked with many different platforms over the past several years, we plan to focus on a handful of best-in-class open source content management platforms.
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in existence. It is a simple but effective blogging and content management system, and while many developers use Wordpress primarily for blogs, it is highly customizable, including an abundance of available plug-ins, making it suitable for most any site. While somewhat more limited than more-complex content management systems, its simplicity and ease of setup makes it a good option in many cases. Built on PHP, WordPress can be installed on virtually any web host. In addition to maintaining several WordPress blogs for clients, Red Bricks Media recently deployed a redesigned site for DriveSavers Data Recovery using WordPress, allowing for ease of maintenance and content updates.
Drupal is a powerful open source CMS with extensive customization options, such as multiple websites and advanced user account management. It is built from the ground up to be extensible and customizable, and plugins and upgrades tend to be stable and reliable. Drupal also has many freely available add-on modules, providing features such as blogs, collaborative authoring environments, forums, peer-to-peer networking, newsletters, podcasting, picture galleries, and file uploads. Drupal runs on PHP, so can be installed easily on most hosting providers. Red Bricks Media developed and deployed a fully redesigned site for Medidata using Drupal, migrating over 500 pages of content in three different languages.
OpenCms is an enterprise-class open source content management system for deploying complex websites, and supports full staging of content revisions before publishing. While OpenCms lacks the universe of community add-ons available for Wordpress or Drupal, there are free add-ons for features like comments, newsletters, surveys, and calendars, and commercial upgrades enabling replication, clustering, publishing workflows, transaction management, and other enterprise-class enhancements. Alkacon, the primary code contributor and maintainer of OpenCms, also offers commercial support, training, and consulting packages. OpenCms happens to be built with Java, and can be deployed in a wide range of technical environments. Red Bricks Media has deployed and maintains several sites using OpenCms, including Academy of Art University and i365.
Our experience with open source CMS solutions has proven that marketers looking to gain control over their website content—without spending a bundle or always calling on the IT department—can make good use of an open source CMS. Your new digital marketing BFF just may be an open source CMS.