How to select an open source CMS
By the STC Online SIG. Originally published February 2006. Revised September 2006.
Based on input from Destry Wion, member, Online SIG web team
There are many open source systems that provide functionality that a dynamic site for an STC SIG might need. To select a system, match the objectives and requirements for the dynamic SIG site to each candidate open source system, and choose a system that supports the maximum number of site objectives and requirements without customization.
The major activities in selecting an open source system are described here.
Assess the home site of the open source system
System home sites keep the user community informed of the latest happenings and recruit new users. On the site you should find details about what the system can do and how. Match these details against the objectives and requirements for your dynamic site.
Consider the system home site itself: How is presented? Is it easy to use? What is the style and tone? Does the site seem professional? If the system home site does not function well, the system might not either.
Watch for documentation and user support forums. Documentation is often the last thing done in open source development, so if a site provides system documentation, that is a “plus.” If you can’t find a support forum, or there is one but hardly any user activity, it means the system has few users and you should not consider it further.
Evaluate the open source system itself
Compare a few systems against each other, and evaluate them individually. Use the comparison tool at CMS Matrix (http://www.cmsmatrix.org/) . This site generates a table listing the specifications of selected systems side-by-side. Match the specifications with the objectives and requirements of your dynamic site.
Evaluate the candidate systems that match your requirements individually, using OpenSource-CMS (http://www.opensourcecms.com/) to try various open-source systems without having to download and install them. Systems for collaborative websites are usually in the Portals (CMS) category. This trial provides an idea of how the administration interfaces look and function. OpenSource-CMS automatically refreshes the systems every two hours, deleting changes made by visitors.
Assess the response of users to the open source system
Research what other users say in general and with respect to your criteria. Read in the user support forums, conducting logical searches with attention to the version being discussed. Post your questions. Look for a record of the system’s being safe to use and easy to update. If complaints outweigh positive dialog, you may want to choose another system.
Five popular systems
Five widely used systems to compare against the objectives and requirements of your dynamic site are:
Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/)
e107 (http://www.e107.org/)
Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org/) (a fork of Mambo (http://www.mamboserver.com/))
WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org/)
Xoops (http://www.xoops.org/)
STC SIG sites
Collaborative STC SIG websites using WordPress are online at http://stc-on.org. After following the selection process outlined in this article, we chose WordPress for its ease of use, even though it lacks version control and some automatic notifications we would have liked to have on our collaborative sites.
About the contributors
Destry Wion earned a Bachelors Degree in Marine Ecology and worked with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and as a webmaster for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He earned a Masters in Technical Communication from the University of Washington, with an emphasis in user-centered design in new media. Destry then relocated to Strasbourg, France, where he lives with his wife, and established a freelance web design business, http://wion.com. He specializes in standards-based design, with a strong adherence to user-centered principles. You can reach Destry via his work contact form (http://wion.com/contact/).
Ann L. Wiley (ann@annlwiley.com), manager of the Online SIG, added updates to this article. Ann is an STC Fellow in the CNY, Rochester, Niagara Frontier, Tech Valley, and NY Metro chapters.