Meaning of Web development has changed drastically since the outsourcing concept phenomenon has started. Web development can include web designing, content creation, content management, framework designing, page layout/masthead creation. The list should not be taken as an exhaustive list. There could be N no. Of things that might constitute web development. But the basics remains the same, “Creating/Managing the identity of individual/business in the virtual world”.
What is Content Management System?
As the name itself suggests that such system hold some sort of contents. Now, you might like to know which contents? Contents can be in any form (audio, video, text, pdf, doc, xls, images etc.). Please note that we are talking about the digital contents that float around the web. CMS frameworks provide an initial set of tools to manage the contents online. Customization can be done to suit your business/personal requirements.
What are different options available in CMS?
You can either go for a proprietary solution or open source. Proprietary vendors hold the software right with them and changes and customization can only be done by them. Due to this very nature, proprietary solutions are expensive and only certain set of the elite club can use afford it.
On the other hand, Open Source Solutions are distributed under the General Public License (GPL). In simple terms, it means any developer can download the source code published on open source software vendor site and make changes that suit the requirement. However, if you specifically want the original vendor’s support then they charge you a nominal fee for support, migration and patch fixes. Third-party vendors can also use open source code to customize the publicly distributed solution based on their industry expertise and cater to the need for any business seeking solution.
CMS like other software is available in two flavors. 1) SaaS (Cloud) 2) On-Premise
Now this concept is also extended into Proprietary and Open Source Solutions.
Let’s take a look at examples of each category.
A) Proprietary Softwares:
a) SaaS (Microsoft office 365, Share point server, Windows Live)
b) On-Premise (IBM enterprise content management, Share point server (MOSS), Open text ECM suite, Oracle ECM suite)
B) Open Source Softwares:
a) SaaS (If hosted on infrastructure service provider/cloud provider, e.g. Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, IBM SmartEnterprise cloud etc): Drupal, Joomla, WordPress
b) On-Premise (If vendor takes care of infrastructure): Drupal, Joomla, WordPress