Open Source and Selecting a CMS

Web publishing is an interesting business. The content itself is one thing, but the software you use to publish is another thing altogether. At the basic level, you have those who are still using HTML editors and FTP to publish pages to their site. All I can say is “Ouch!”. I pity you. Then, there are those who wisened up and decided to use a content management system.

Now, there are a LOT of content management systems out there. If you look at the PHP directory over at Hotscripts, you will see that “Content Management” is the most popular category of the bunch. Meaning, of all the various types of software listed on Hotscripts, there are more different CMSs there than any other kind of software. In a word, damn. Now imagine trying to “shop” for a CMS for your site. There are just SO many choices there, it can be mind-numbing. Understood. Now, imagine yourself already using a CMS that hardly anyone understands or knows the internals of. Now, you’re stuck.

Change of Heart

I am a big fan of open source software, and this coming from the guy who programmed Miraserver (which is not open source at this time). I like Miraserver. I programmed it specifically to suit my own needs, then expanded it so as to broaden it to meet the needs of others. But, as much as I liked Miraserver, I was running up against the same problem one can run into with any commercial CMS – the need for specialized programming. And by “specialized”, I mean programming done by people who intimately know the product. Here I am, the programmer of my own CMS, yet due to various things, I barely have the time to expand the system.

In the meantime, I am using WordPress to power this blog and am growing quite fond of it’s powerful simplicity. WordPress is an awesome publishing platform. And better yet, it is open source. It has a worldwide community of users who DO know how the thing is programmed and can hack it up six ways to Sunday. It also has a plug-in system that allows you to expand almost anything without hacking the base code. There are thousands of pre-existing plug-ins for the WordPress platform.

There are other choices for those who don’t want to use WordPress. There is Joomla and Drupal, both very popular and powerful open source CMSes. Both of these are more traditional CMS platforms, not blogging platforms which is what WordPress is traditionally thought of.

Open Source Versus Commercial

There are pros and cons to both. But, let’s look at it from the perspective of open source:

Pros:

• Free
• Often a large community of existing users
• Large community means help and hacks

Cons

• All source code (good and bad) is public
• Nobody to hold responsible if something doesn’t work
• Usually no real tech support (other than the community itself)

I have to recommend using open source to power your website, though. It was a major deciding factor in me deciding to switch my largest site over to WordPress. I think it puts PCMech on a more stable foundation.

So, what do you think? Do you prefer open source of commercial CMS? And, if open source, is there another reason other than the price tag?