Content Management Systems and building your eBiz

As a retired Software Engineer(big word for under paid corporation slave). I got tired of setting around to house telling my cat to stop doing the things cats do. I started a side business repairing computers. But I messed the call of coding and creating things... that's what I like best about design be it software or graphics. When I worked at (Big unnamed corporation, because of on going law suit) we used things like CASE Tools, UML, COBRA, UniCenter and other things that will make you pull your hair out. When i started to look for a manageable platform to work with dynamic websites i have never heard of Opensource CMS's I was looking into .NET, then one day while poking around with Cpanel at my host i found PhpNuke...etc...and the rest is history. Most Content Management Systems, are a bit adhoc in there design, but you can work around that. Fast deployment of sites is what i find Content Management Systems, useful for. The learning curve for a neophyte is quite high, but design is the key. After your curve goes down you can deploy a site in a day!

Some Content Management Systems, CMS for short, can cost thousands of dollars. While others are opensource. I am focusing here on the opensource CMS called CPGNuke DragonFly. There are many more opensource CMS's that you can test drive at http://www.opensourcecms.com.

DragonFly has it's pro's and con's like any others CMS, but its biggest pro is the built in LEO(Link Engine Optimized) system. Search engines like pure links, with no "?" in them. With one click you can make your url's that look like this "http://godotshop.com/index.php?name=Forums", look like this "http://godotshop.com/Fourms.html ". Other modules like Google Tap for phpNuke are to limited, and need a lot of maintenance when you have a add-on which has to work with it. Secondly Google Tab is slower due to heavy htaccess and PHP usage. LEO works thru a system core function. That function is what converts a URL like index.php?name=Forums into Forums.html. I have yet had to edit my .htaccess file, LEO just works! Out of the box.

The only con I can find is the total lack of third party modules. And I mean total lack. In my case because I have some knowledge of php I was able to get my site up and running. But if your a user that needs a plugin rich CMS your better off with phpNuke.

Elray Jones
elrayjones@earthlink.net
Business Card at http://www.godotshop.com/webmaster

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