A portal Web site is a Web site that aims to be your “portal,” or entranceway,  to most anything you can do on the Web. For example, Yahoo is considered a  portal because it offers a search engine that helps you find other Web sites, as  well as topics categories such as finance,  travel, health, etc. that help you find information on the Web about those  topics. In the 1998-2001 phase of the Internet, many Web sites aspired to be  portals, because they believed it would mean users would use them as their  “start page” and visit frequently, even if they eventually left to visit other  Web sites. However, these days, most Web sites do not want to be mere start  pages; they want to keep you on their Web site for as long as possible, and not  take you to other Web sites.

What’s a CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is software that makes it easy for non-techies to organize and manage web content.

That’s big, because it makes maintaining and updating a website simple and affordable.

Once upon a time updating a website meant passing off your polished and perfected writing to a programmer who would convert it into a mishmash of computer lingo, often unintentionally skewering some of the finer points of style and layout (”You wanted a new paragraph where?”). The process was slow and painful for everyone involved, not to mention expensive.

Nowadays, thanks to the advent of WYSIWYG editors (”What You See Is What You Get,” like the Bold and Italic functions in Microsoft Word) and content management systems, you don’t need a degree in computer science to update a website. If you can successfully send an e-mail, you can update a web page. Of course CMS’s can range from free, open source software to enormously expensive custom-designed solutions. Of course we recommend using WordPress, which is technically a blog system but can easily be used as a CMS to run websites.

A CMS is an enormous boost to the small business or organization that doesn’t have a massive tech budget.

It simplifies the process and puts the website back into the hands of content creators, allowing you to spend more time on what really matters—your content.

What are the benefits of an CMS Solution?

Content Management Systems allows businesses to take full control of their website content and update it as often as they wish. Whether you wish to add news articles, or update your company products / information, the benefits of a CMS are invaluable as a tool for your business promotion on the web.

• 100% Flexibility & Control of your Website content.
• Add/Remove categories/sections of content on your website.
• Control your website via an easy to use Log-in Admin area.
• Add Newsletter Functionality to your website.
• Add Complex Enquiry Forms for your customers to use.
• Add Secure Payment Gateway functionality for your products & services.
• Add functionality for “Client Registration” accounts to your website.

Anyone that is familiar with the old-school method of website maintenance knows how much time it takes to add or edit content on your website. The process of continuously uploading your html files and  graphics and other steps involved within the process are unnecessarily time consuming. This tedious moving and shuffling around of files and images with the use of an FTP program, or a browser-based tool seems to be more of a hassle than it should be. You would think with all of the advances in technology, that there would be an easier and more structured way of getting your files on to your website. Another problem with this procedure is that it ends up using a lot of storage space. All in all, the method for uploading files and images to a website is nothing less than severely lacking in several areas.

The need for an easier way to work with web content as text, graphics and video is what has made a CMS, or content management system so loved amongst web developers. A CMS helps a web developer to control a large collection worth of their online content in a much simpler manner.  Wikipedia defines a web content management system as “a software system used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material.”

One great aspect of using a CMS for your web development needs is that allows you to be able to make your updates without needing to re-upload your html, php or asp source files each time, this can save a web developer a lot of time and hassle. Another benefit of using a CMS is that it is much more user friendly. This means that a webmaster doesn’t necessarily have to be a web developer in order to use a CMS, because of the use of WYSIWYG editors. Once the CMS software has been set up all a webmaster will have to do is to upload the necessary system files, set up a database and run the install and the system will pretty much take it from there.

One aspect many people like about using a CMS is that it will also save a lot of space on your server, it also allows you to display dynamic content on your site from a database. A CMS can also be used as a means of streamlining business processes and workflows, it also enables a company to setup all kind of editorial roles with security aspects for adding or editing content.

A CMS provides a user friendly atmosphere for organizing content and content publishing. It provides you the ability to set a schedule for when your content will be published. You will be able to set permissions for your content or able to track content versioning. You will also be able to edit your pages without any knowledge of HTML. When you use a CMS you will get the convenience of editing your website without a lot of time consuming web development techniques.

The ability to change your CMS layout, template or theme goes with much ease, for most open source CMS there are a lot of free and paid theme packs available. These themes or templates are easy to edit based on your own wishes as they work with CSS stylesheet (Cascading Style Sheet). Also a CMS is quite easy to extend with new functionalities and tools through several plugins and add-ons.  In most cases you just need to upload the plugin/add-on source files, activate and configure it within your admin panel.

Choosing the Right Open Source CMS

Before you commit to a certain CMS, you will want to do your research and make sure you get the best one for you and your website needs. On this website we try to support your decision making for the best open source web content management system by profiling most common used CMS and review them on specific important elements of a open source CMS. We and other CMS users made reviews based on the following categories;

1) Installation
2) Built-in features
3) Security management
4) Performance
5) Editorial Features
6) Themes & templates
7) Plugins & extensions
8 ) Search Engine Optmization friendliness
9) Multilingual support
10) Ease of use
11) Support community

If you are planning on setting up a business, then you probally want to consider that the CMS you choose should provide you with all tools you need to run your business website. So it will be important that this specific CMS rates high on plugin and extensions . If the CMS is going to be used for a webzine, then you want to go with a CMS which will allow you to publish articles regularly, maybe automated and with much ease. In this case Editorial Features are most important. The CMS you choose should be one which will be capable of handling your own individual needs. You also want to make sure that it will be supported by your server requirements.

There are many different types of CMS software for you to choose from. Some can run you into the thousands of dollars and are capable of handling complicated commercial needs. Others are less expensive and can be used by people that don’t have extensive complicated needs.

Some open source CMS software can also be found online to download for free. Before you get too excited over the possibility of using free open source software, you should know that it can be time consuming as well. This is due to the fact that it will require you to put everything together and this can be tedious and time consuming in its own right and support is most of the time limited to an online support community of CMS users. Although these kind of communities can be very sophisticated and well equipped with in dept CMS knowledge it is important to check if you doubt your setup skills.

If you have already gone through the process of testing various open source  or paid CMS and found they are lacking in one area or another, then you can hire a software programmer to create a custom tailored CMS to meet all your individual content needs. However, be aware that this can end up costing you a lot of money.  A CMS which is designed specifically for you will provide you with everything you need. However, it won’t offer you the updates and improving of its features will be left up to you and your wallet.

When it comes to determining which CMS is best for your needs, you need to consider a lot of areas. If you want a CMS which will provide you with regular updates, security guarantee and professional tech support, then a commercial CMS may be the best for you. However, there can be a hefty price tag attached to this type of CMS.

An open source CMS may be reliable and less expensive; however, it can be tricky and confusing for you to use without the necessary technical background. Security will not be as reliable as it would be with a commercial CMS, and the updates are depending on the wide spread use of this specific open source CMS. But when it is used by many webmasters it is expected there will be a lot of free theme/template packs available and extendable plugins, more with most paid and custom CMS.