There are currently hundreds of good “Open Source Content Management Systems” (CMS) on the market with a large user base. Some of these are platforms such as, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, TYPO3 and Alfresco are being used by large corporations to allow them to publish content quickly and efficiently with no need for programming. But all “CMS” platforms are not created equal and have different strengths and weaknesses and selecting the right one for your business comes down to what is the best features of the software that suits your requirements.
In this article I will provide several guidelines to help you select an Open Source System, based on a few crucial business criteria’s.
So what are the 9 criteria to consider when selecting the right “CMS” platform to suit your organization?
- Content Approval / Workflow (Ability to configure a workflow system for content approval cycle)
- Multiple Sites Support (Do you have multiple websites for your organisation and need to be able to configure multiple website portals in the single CMS?)
- Product Support Services (Is there good technical support from the software vendor?)
- CMS Third Party Extensions (Community extensions support)
- Granular User Access Control (Ability to restrict users to certain areas of the website via login)
- Ease of Use / Configuration (Content Editing, installation, templating)
- Multiple Delivery Channel (Web, Mobile, PDA etc)
- Scalability (Ability to support large traffic load)
- Cost of Ownership (Lower cost will have higher score. This is referred to the implementation cost)
The following matrix chart below summarizes my evaluation of the five top “Open Source Systems” against the business criteria.
Depending on which criterion is most effective to your company, you may use this matrix only as a guideline for your organization.
The scoring system I use:
0 = None
1 = Low
2 = Medium
3 = High
| Joomla | Drupal | DotNetNuke | TYPO3 | Alfresco | |
| Content Approval / Workflow |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
| Multiple Sites Support |
1 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
| Product Support Services |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
| CMS Third Party Extensions |
3 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
| Granular User Access Control |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
| Ease of use / Configuration |
3 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
| Multiple Delivery Channel |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
| Scalability |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
| Cost of Ownership |
3 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
Even though I have listed and compared five “Open Source Content Management Systems” (CMS) preferences, there are many more to choose from. To read about other CMS platforms check out some interesting research by “Ric’s Blog“ which reviews twenty other sites (including my listed five).
So what criteria have you used to select a “CMS” platform for your company? Look forward to hearing your story.
