The Inner Core of your Website ” Is it a CMS?

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

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by Theodore Metagastar

Are you thinking about starting your own website for your personal interest? Whether you are looking at a topic related creative outlet or a site designed to promote a product or service, the first thing you should consider is the tools available to you.

How do you go about writing and publishing a webpage? You can use Microsoft Word, but while the capability is built into this popular software, there are limits. There are many other options to consider.

You can also purchase a program designed to create web pages. These programs give you more control over the design of your web pages. You will find options such as using CSS files, a common file that contains all your website formatting. With a CSS file it is easier to make global changes to your website, and all the pages linked to this file will automatically change with those simple changes to the font sizes or text formatting.

There is another direction you can take, and that is choosing a content management system. These systems are integrated web site design and pubishing programs that give your website a foundation. Themes and add on features are always available for these systems.

A couple of the popular Content Management Systems, or CMS or short, are Joomla and WordPress. Both of these CMSs are build with Open Source, meaning that the code is provided to help others to build supporting components. This shared environment makes open source programs an amazing creative collective that has resulted in a wide array of features. Some of these features are fee based, while many are given freely or by donation.

Lets take a look at Joomla, and the best place to look is at their own website. This system is free to download, and offers many powerful components and add on features. Templates are available as well, both free and paid. The forum is a great resource as well.

WordPress is a very popular content management system. There are many plugins or add on features available as well. Themes can be downloaded at WordPress, or found at many websites. You can use WordPress on your own hosted site, and this program can be installed using Fantastico or following the simple installation guides.

Speaking of WordPress, there is also WordPress MU, which stands for multi user. Multi user opens the door to hosting multiple sites build on the same domain, with one installation of wordpress at the core.

Choosing a content management system will have a big impact on your website design and performance. Once you make your decision you will likely continue to find features and new developments that will prove that you made a wise decision.

About the Author:

Theodore Metagastar writes ideas and hints forblogging for fun and profit as well as reviews on website hosting, domains and trademarks.