Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems have been around for a number of years now, and as the technology improves and web hosting providers provide more options, they have been becoming more mainstream. CMSs also include blogging tools.

Some examples:

• php-nuke
• post-nuke
• Dragonfly CMS
• php-website
• drupal
• mediawiki
• geeknet
• movable type
• word press

There are many more.

There are also a number of free hosting providers that set up for bloging and other content:

• blogger
• tribe.net
• myspace
• youtube
• live journal

The focus of this discussion is Content Management Systems.

CMSs rely heavily on the use of Cascading Style Sheets and template files used to generate a consistent look and feel for a website. Each type of CMS has its own set of strengths and weaknesses including:

I've used several of these systems, and prototyped others on a closed system at home. If you have access to a system you can prototype various systems on, such as a Linux workstation, then you can figure out which ones will best suit your needs.

Several systems incorporate forums that can be used to extend the usability of your system. There are also a number of third party add-ons that can be used to expand the features available to you for your system, as well as community support to go to for help when you run into an issue.

Security can pose an issue as there are a number of "script kiddies" who think that vandalizing websites is a "cool" pastime. That makes security important. Also, not all CMSs are "welcome" on all hosting providers. PHP-Nuke is an example of that category, which is disappointing as it is one of the easier systems to configure. I used PHP-Nuke for a couple of years on the first go-around of the Cold Death Quadrant.

Currently I am running Mediawiki for the Cold Death Quadrant website. The installation and configuration requires a fair amount of work with a configuration file. Once it is up, it is very stable. The learning curve isn't high and there is plenty of documentation to get you through the process. After that, customizing a skin based on the default monobook skin is a matter of applying modifications to the main.css (Cascading Style Sheet) file.

Mediawiki is the engine used by Wikipedia and Memory Alpha. Take a look at those sites to get a feel for what you can do with it. There is also a tremendous amount of content on those sites making them good resources of information.

Twisty has been experimenting with Drupal, and you can "currently" see the results of his efforts on the test.kag.org site. He has also been prototyping a site with Dragonfly, reporting good results.

Movable Type and Word Press are both blog tools and may not be suitable for using as the main part of your site. Additionally, php-Nuke and Drupal both include blogging tools. Although I advocate the use of blogs into your overall strategy for your ship's web presence, they should not be your primary focus.

I would suggest using either blogger, which allows a level of group blogging (with more than one contributor), or Live Journal (which allows you to easily link your crew together in a community). Movable Type and Word Press are excellent tools if you have sufficient disk space and database access to support them along with your CMS of choice, although unnecessary if your CMS includes these types of tools as an additional feature.

Because CMSs make updating your site easy by using wysiwyg editors, site management becomes an easy task: just add content.