Archive for the ‘ Content Management System ’ Category

Drupal CMS – Best Practices

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Your website is the heart and soul of your online business. Are you planning Drupal as your content management system? Sure- Good decision. Well, let’s take a peek into what are the best practices for a Drupal website! (Reference – Drupal’s website)

Following best practices will help you protect your most valuable business asset – your website.

  • Planning – You might wonder what this has to do with an already feature packed CMS. Well, Drupal provides an amazing tool set. Plan and use them judiciously.
  • Future planning – Every time Drupal rolls out an update, check your website’s compatibility and upgrade accordingly.
  • Backup: Maintain a backup of all your data – systems crash, websites break down and there goes your heart and soul – your online business!
  • Testing – Test and re-test your PHP code.

Content Management System Features

Monday, September 19th, 2011

Gone are the days when you needed to be a coding language wiz to add or update content to your website. And gone are the days when you had to call for support if you did not know a programming language to update those new products and services to your website! Today’s content Management systems are the key. With Content Management systems, you can add, remove, and edit content to your website from a single console. No more waiting in queue for support and no more extra payments for those calls!

Here are some features:

  • Immediate modification of website content
  • CMS automatically generates the XHTML valid websites.
  • Helps you select for yourself a search engine friendly URL. (It displays a modifiable URL for you.)
  • It provides for automatic archival of expired material.
  • Management of multiple language content.
  • It is possible to upload files (text) and graphics.
  • It is possible to edit the files and graphics that were previously uploaded.

 

Well, these are just a few amongst the many features of a Content Management System. Most importantly it provides users ease of operation and saves valuable time!

What’s New In Drupal 7.8

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Drupal being the most robust and flexible content management system, has gained popularity in a very short time. It has been used to build personal blogs to enterprise web applications. Drupal has the support of thousands of passionate open source developers over the world. Lets take a quick look at the features of the very new Drupal 7.8

  • Flexible content: You can define custom fields to be used with various content types, comments and terms. You can store the content in MySQL or SQL or a remote storage too.
  • Better Themes: You maintain control over what gets seen to the website visitor with the new Render API.
  • Administration screens are improved.
  • Automated code testing with millions of built in tests.
  • Database Support: Drupal now supports SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. You can install modules to use MS SQL Server, Oracle, and more.

Content Management Systems – Joomla and Drupal

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Customizable Content Management Systems platform giants Drupal and Joomla have been most widely used. Being similar as well as apart in many ways Drupal and Joomla both have won the hearts of many open source developers to create website and content management systems. The reason being the scope for customization they provide. Web development and customization is an art with a blend of technology. To be able to build innovative features and integrate them into an application requires skill of creativity and a technology expert to put them all together to craft the most unique web applications. Joomla and Drupal provide for the best raw material for such endeavors.

Here is a comparative analysis of the two much talked about CMS tools. To put it simply we are not trying to establish that one is better than the other, or this is not a promotion campaign for either of them. This is an attempt to place a comparison to help readers to make a decision about the product they want to use. With the strong foundation of open source, both Drupal and Joomla have been in the market for a long time and have been used successfully by developers to create, customize and provide their customers with ultimate solutions with add on features and all!

Let us take a quick look at what both the software are all about:

  • If you take a look at the user interface (UI), Joomla definitely scores points over Drupal as it has a very user friendly interface. Well, Drupal is a favorite amongst the techies who prefer to work in text mode.
  • Joomla comes with a default web editor. Joomla scores here too! Drupal does not have a default web editor. 
  • Drupal’s shopping cart comes with a lot of features. Not the case with Joomla!
  • When you are looking at the categories and sub categories, Drupal provides for more categories and sub categories. Categories are unlimited in Drupal!
  • Both of them are not inherent blogging platforms, but can be made to perform that function too.

These are not the ultimate basis for your selection, but just an insight to what you are going to be working with. Ofcourse take a look at the technicalities and compatibilities and then make a proper selection for your web development projects.

Content Management System – Features

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Some core functionalities of today’s most widely used Content Management Systems has been listed below:-

1] Centralized Repository: CMS offers a fully centralized repository that enables authorized users to find and retrieve quickly and easily any digital content maintained by the company.

2] Rapid Import of Content: Nowadays, most content management solutions provide the ability to rapidly import existing files, documents, and materials, as well as unstructured digital information, into environment. This is because by the time company purchases or implements a CMS, they have already generated a large quantity of digital content.

3] SEO Control: CMS allows your organization to do the hardest part of Search Engine Optimization on your own and that is creating content. Also, it is important that the site give you the control over other important SEO data like title tags, Meta descriptions, etc. For optimization purpose you need to have full access to all SEO elements.

4] Security: Protection of confidential information is important component of CMS strategy. Most of them offer multiple level of security so as to ban unauthorized access.

5] Dynamic Tracking: With the help of CMS, administrators can closely monitor all activities which help them to understand how information is utilized to make more effective plans. Also, many CMS offers dynamic alert capabilities which instantly notifies when certain events occurs.

6] Speed and Performance: Use of Content Management Systems provides speed and reliability in its performance.

7] Clean URLs: The URLs created by CMS are not too long, can be understood by a person and can be customized if needed.

8] Flexibility and Creativity: CMS provides flexibility which is needed for creativity. It is possible to preview what the content will look like by “submit” or “update” button, so each user can view various templates and layouts before submissions.

Joomla Vs WordPress

Monday, May 16th, 2011

Each CMS Joomla and WordPress offers unique functionalities and capabilities. Both of them work well for managing a website where WordPress works best when it comes to small and medium business and Joomla is best for the websites which demands multiple user privileges or custom database work.

WordPress CMS is the easiest CMS today to be used available on internet. It can be used for blogging and also can be configured easily to work in many other ways. It is very easy to use and it is simple when you wish to add images, publish a page or any other new item.

On other hand, Joomla CMS is the most popular CMS amongst designers, developers and administrators because of its flexibility and power. It enables all users to create great looking websites which is also easy to use. Joomla also features numerous capabilities and a developed custom database work.

Joomla includes a complex multiple user privilege system with user registration and layered content privileges, while WordPress doesn’t have such privilege system. Also when we talk about multiple user groups, Joomla is the best Open Source CMS Solution amongst all other Content Management Systems.

Both the CMS are good in their own functionalities and requirements. So the choice of making a selection from these two totally depends on the requirements and purpose of the website to be designed. If you talk about the simplicity of the system than WordPress is much easier and simpler then Joomla.

How Content Management System Integration Helps?

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Content Management Systems provide a collaborative environment for sharing information across your business and deliver advantages over the shared file systems, including access control, version control and work flow management.

CMS Integration can solve many problems with your publishing system that can arise by the use of multiple systems. Some of these problems are:-

1] The Content assets are stored often in both systems at the same point of time which can lead to redundancy results too many errors. These errors occur as users don’t know which system has the most current version of the asset.

2] Second problem is when you want to use asset from another system, you have to find them and transfer them to your own system which is a very tedious job.

3] Searching, sharing and reusing the content and assets is time consuming compared to enterprise CMS.

To eliminate these problems, organizations must use single enterprise system that will help all departments share their assets and can work together. Some benefits which can be achieved by doing this are:-

1] It definitely prevents data redundancy and error-prone meta data synchronization.

2] All the users will be able to work and access all the assets because of the user interface which will help in saving lots of time.

3] All users should have only one logon, which will make system easy to access and will also increase user adoption.
So these are the major benefits of Integrating Content Management Systems.

Six Main Categories of CMS

Friday, May 6th, 2011

Content Management System [CMS] are basically software programs and strategies which are used in organizations to make different types of content such as information, human resource, multimedia resources, web files, electronic documents, multimedia, etc.

The six main categories of CMS which is categorized according to the type of application they perform are as follows:-

1] ECMS – Enterprise CMS:
This kind of CMS is used to manage the content of the organizational processes of the companies, enterprises or corporations.

2] WCMS – Web CMS:
CMS is software for creating and managing web content HTML. It implements automatic templates with a WYSISYG format for editing and creating web pages. It thus helps in simplifying publication of web content for companies.

3] Electronic Document CMS [e-document CMS]:
It manages the electronic documents which can be easily facilitated with e-mail notification and automated routing.

4] MCMS – Mobile CMS:
It is a software program which basically customized to create and manage mobile web pages. There is no need of programming skills for uploading, editing and approving content for mobile sites with the help of this software.

5] Component CMS:
It mainly involves management of components at the component level rather than whole documents or web pages. Mostly it acts as a sub function of all other CMS though it can also work as a separate application.

6] Media CMS:
This CMS is mainly designed for media like television, radio, etc.
These CMS are used as Management tools at the enterprise, web, mobile, media, electronic content and component levels.

Content Management System Vs HTML Websites

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

A web presence is a must in this age of globalization to reach out for maximum number of potential clients fast which is the ultimate goal of any business.

There are two major types of Website Development that is Static Web Development and Dynamic Web Development. A type of web development which is becoming popular nowadays is a CMS website.

A Content Management System is essentially a web based application which includes most hosting plans which lets you design, organize and manage your website easily. A CMS is a PHP application which lets you create and manage your website using an admin panel. While in a HTML website, you have to use programs such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver to edit the website.

Compared to CMS, HTML pages give limited functionality which makes difficult for a developer to express himself. With CMS you have an option of making add-ons to your website and choosing from a wide range of functionalities. Using CSS files, you have an ability to control the design part of the site. With the help of more functionality, you can make your website more Search Engine friendly as you can have full control over the URL, title, Meta tags and every other aspect of the content of the web page.

CMS site is more organized than HTML site. In CMS, you can easily login to the admin panel and control all the aspects of your website.

It depends on the type of the website and its objectives, developers decide whether to opt for CMS or for HTML site. Moreover, you can put any HTML site on a CMS but you cannot put any CMS on an HTML. If you have a small budget and updating or changing is not required in your website at regular intervals than HTML website is best suitable.

Joomla V/s Drupal

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

If you compare these two CMS and try to evaluate then you will always come to a conclusion that users using Joomla loves Joomla and Drupal users loves Drupal.

Drupal has superior architecture and it also has very SEO friendly platform. Drupal is always known for its sound and sturdy build. Drupal is used by large organization as it is a content management system for big projects as it has rock solid and high quality platform. Joomla is comparatively easy to install and setup but only one site can be developed per installation.

Compared to Joomla, Drupal is better when it comes to ability for non-technical people to learn the CMS interface, maintenance and upgrading, ability to create a new and functioning website quickly, and ability to teach clients to use their CMS more effectively. Joomla is used more by beginners comparatively as it has easy to use interface, gets install easily and in less amount of time.

Joomla is not as sophisticated as Drupal and it cannot perform as well as Drupal. Moreover, Joomla is not SEO friendly and it is used more by those who wants to create their personal websites or by those who just started working with web design. Joomla is basically not advisable for creating high-end websites. While Drupal is being used by many high profile sites like MTV UK, BBC, NASA, etc.

Drupal is rated higher than Joomla because of its support with multimedia, social networking, SSL, forums, event calendar, Blogging, document management, internationalization, user management and permission features, ease of external integration and developing large complex websites and quality of add-on for enhancing functionality.
Drupal can work with Apache and IIS while Joomla supports only Apache. Joomla supports SSL log-ins and SSL pages while Drupal doesn’t support them. Drupal has inbuilt Translation manager while Joomla has a free add-on for the same purpose.

So basically both of these content management systems are great tools it just depends on the nature of the project and functionalities of the project for which you require them.