If you’ve read anything at all about portals, and you’ve heard about blogs, you’ll probably know at least three things: Portals are the most exciting way to do business, Portals can be really, I mean really, complicated, and lastly Portals are absolutely, outrageously, often unaffordably expensive. Blogs, on the other hand, offer less functionality — but are more affordable.

Open Source “CMS” (Content Management Systems) are set to change all that … Now there are a whole slew of choices for CMS and Blog software that have been developed for the masses. They’re licensed under the GNU/GPL license. They’re easy to install and administer and reliable. Cost? The programs are free to obtain. Yes… free. And, they don’t even have to know HTML to operate your Blog/Portal once it’s up and running (although, you can enhance pages if you do). Of course you’ll log quite a few hours setting up your site (or have us do it for you), and you will need to customize it with professional graphics (a service we also provide). Also, bear in mind that content is king — you need to provide professionally written stories that are of interest to your target market on a regular basis.

Aside from keeping your site updated, there is one more very good reason to provide these stories: you can “syndicate” them easily and in so doing market yourself and your company using the simple tools that come built-in to your Content Management System.

CMS programs like Joomla & WordPress (we use for our clients’ CMS websites) feature:

* Completely database driven site engines
* News, products or services sections fully editable and manageable
* Topics sections can be easily added to by contributing authors/editors
* Fully customizable layouts
* Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site
* Dynamic Forum/Poll/Voting booth for on-the-spot results
* Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX server, Solaris and AIX

There are a whole slew of choices for CMS and Blog software that have been developed and are licensed under the GNU/GPL license. They’re easy to administer and reliable. Cost? Free.

Extensive Administration:

* Change order of objects including news, FAQs, articles etc.
* Remote author submission module for News, Articles, FAQs and Links
* Object hierarchy - for sections, departments, divisions
* News feed manager. Accept RSS news feeds to serve related articles
* Email-a-friend and Print-format for every story and article
* In-line Text editor similar to Word Pad
* User editable look and feel
* Polls/Surveys - Now put a different one on each page
* Template Manager. Download templates and implement them in seconds
* Layout preview. See how it looks before going live
* Banner manager. Make money out of your site

Now that’s quite a lot of automation, and functionality at your site. It represents the smart way to present your business online. Too many clients think of their websites as an online “brochure.” Hello? Aren’t brochures made with ink fixed fast on paper? That was called “printing technology,” and why be limited, conceptually, to the boundaries of what a brochure printing press can do? Your investment in the time to learn the software is all that’s required, since this CMS solutions are available to you free. Throw out the brochures. Bring in your dynamic website and watch your business grow.
What’s the Difference between a Blog, Portal, and a Content Management System?

Well… that’s a good question. Let’s start with the easiest — a Blog. A blog is short for “web log”, and is a place to write, or “journal”, about ideas, musings, and opinions. Some blogs are filled with more “newsy” posts (in a journalism style), while others are simply personal autobiographical thoughts sent up to the internet via easy to use blog software like WordPress (we’ll look at its feature list in a moment).

For “Portal”, think Yahoo.com as a general example, though there are many sites in this category that focus on a particular niche. Garden.com is one example of a niche focused portal that serves as a gathering point for people interested in gardening. Are CMS programs ideally conceived to help build a Portal? Yes. Do you have to use them for that purpose? No. You can take advantage of the automation and ease of use features inherent in CMS programs to build a corporate website, not intended as a niche portal. Why not allow your team to easily post articles to your site — keeping it up to date — and allow the CMS program to keep it formated properly, and ensure the news is rotated automatically? That’s the great strength of using CMS for your website solution.

Ok. Let’s take a look at the list of features for a good blog, so you can compare them to the CMS features listed above. This list is taken from WordPress.org, and blog software will vary a bit — see the resource list below for more information.

Blog Software Features (included in WordPress)

* Instant publishing with no rebuilding
* Comment spam protection
* Complete CMS back-end in newest versions
* Many great plug-ins, including newsletter, SEO, shopping cart, directory, forums, etc.
* RSS feed syndication of your posts
* Integrated blogrolling features
* Password-protected posts
* Custom fields
* Easy to customize
* Workflow Management — You can have types of users that can only post drafts, not publish to the front page.
* Multiple authors/editors - WordPress’ highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges
* Multiple categories
* Sub-categories
* Post by email
* Full web standards compliance
* Uses PHP and MySQL

So, good blogging software, is really just a simpler CMS program without quite as many modules and functions. We recommend it for a simpler one person solution, or for smaller companies who are primarily news oriented in their web presence. Now… on to the resources, and Hey… these are free programs, so what are you waiting for?

Tags: News //