Content Management Systems and E-Commerce Applications

Because of the restrictions inherent to static websites, and the cost associated with dynamic websites, a solution was needed that would allow people without a great deal of technical ability to create dynamic websites quickly and cheaply.  The solutions that were created were Content Management Systems and E-Commerce Applications.  These two classes of web applications allow people to upload the code for the web application to a web hosting space, enter a few configuration details, add products and/or content, and have a working dynamic website inside of a few hours.

Content Management Systems are web applications that allow one or more people to add content to a website without having to know anything about coding.  There is a wide variety of Content Management Systems, but pretty much all of them consist of some type of administrative back-end where administrators can upload print and graphics for different pages within the site, change the layout of the site, add and remove pages, and add dynamic features such as contact us forms to the site.  There are many examples of Content Management Systems.  Here are a few of the more popular applications:

Typepad (www.typepad.com) - Typepad is a blogging package that is easy to use while still being totally customizeable.  Typepad has a variety of professionally designed templates for novice users and a template builder for advanced users.  It also has a  WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editing environment that will let you take up blogging with a miminum amount of effort.

EZ-Publish (http://ez.no/ezpublish) - eZ Publish is an Enterprise Content Management platform with an easy to use out of the box Web Content Management System.  eZ Publish has a flexible content engine that serves as the core for dynamic and personalized websites. eZ Publish comes with much functionality out-of-the-box, but is also extremely customizable. eZ Publish makes it easy to allow users to interact with your site and even generate their own content if you allow them to.

Drupal (www.drupal.org) - Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.  Drupal incorporates a variety of add-on modules to enable features such as blogging, forums, newsletters, picture galleries, file uploads/downloads, and much much more.

.Net Nuke (www.dotnetnuke.com) - DotNetNuke is an open-source Web Application Framework ideal for creating and deploying projects such as commercial websites, corporate intranets and extranets, online publishing portals, and custom vertical applications.  DotNetNuke is built on a Microsoft ASP.NET (VB.NET) platform, and is easily installed and hosted.  DotNetNuke is highly extensible and can be made to do almost anything you want it to do.  It is, however, a little more complicated than some other packages.

E-Commerce Applications are applications that allow people to quickly create an online store complete with a shopping cart, product catalog, and integration with a payment gateway.  Here are a few of the more popular E-Commerce Applications:

OSCommerce (www.oscommerce.com) - osCommerce has attracted the largest community for an e-commerce solution that consists of over 160,100 store owners and developers worldwide with add-ons being contributed on a daily basis. To date there are over 4,400 add-ons available that have been created by the community to extend the features of an osCommerce online store.  osCommerce has everything you need to get started in selling physical and digital goods over the internet, from the Catalog frontend that is presented to your customers, to the Administration Tool backend that completely handles your products, customers, orders, and online store data.

Zen Cart™ (www.zencart.com) - Zen Cart™ is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. Zen Cart™ puts the merchants and shoppers requirements first.  Zen Cart™ can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills.