Blog: Commercial or Open-Source CMS: something in between

Sep 4, 2014 | Vilius Kučiukas

Commercial vs Open-Source

Choosing a content management system (CMS) is a likely first step in building your organizations web site. A wide variety of commercial and open source CMS’s are available. There are many articles and blogs comparing popular open source solutions such as Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla and commercial off-the-shelf choices like Sitecore, Sitefinity, Ektron, Adobe CQ, Expression Engine, IBM WebSphere, Microsoft SharePoint and others. The key factors having influence on choosing may include:

1. Customization

Commercial solutions offer limited possibilities for customization of the CMS so it meets of your business requirements. An open source CMS solution is fully customizable since the source code is readily available. However, open source software can be poorly documented and customization can be difficult and may provide no real benefit for the business or organization. In addition, open source customization may prevent you from upgrading to the latest release of the CMS!

2. Price

An open source CMS is available to the public free of charge. Commercial CMS price vary widely and way exceed thousand USD. Typically, a commercial CMS in is ready to use, includes support and are well documented. While an open source solution may be free of charge for the product itself there maybe significant hidden support costs. Support may be required for installation, configuration and customization.

3. Hosting

Typically a commercial CMS requires a vendor specific platform. For example Microsoft SharePoint runs on Microsoft Windows server system. In contrast an open source CMS systems would run on an open source platform such as Linux, Apache http server and MySQL database server. These platforms and applications are freely available under the General Public License (GPL) and are basis of shared hosting at significantly reduced total cost of ownership (TCO). Reduced TCO can be highly advantageous to many organizations.

Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting. With shared hosting, multiple websites are shared on one server. The host splits up server resources in order to defer the cost to many different customers. This means that shared hosting accounts are more affordable. Hosting of websites in shared hosting servers require very low expenses typically in the range of 3-5 USD/month.

4. New developments

Commercial off-the-shelf systems are proprietary and vendor specific. Incontrast, a community of volunteers representing a variety of different industries oversees open source CMS platform development. For example Drupal has over 30,000 developers contributing, testing and reviewing code. While this approach allows for a wide variety of custom modules and applications, proper quality control can be an issue. Commercial of-the-shelf modules tend to be developed under superior quality control processes. And as result you may have a very strange package: open source CMS with commercial add-ons and plugins.

Both open source and commercial CMS platforms have advantages and disadvantages. For organization’s that require low TCO and a product that is easy to install, configure and administer, and be open to development KUSoftas CMS is likely the answer.

KUSoftas CMS is likely the answer

KUSoftas CMS (http://www.kusoftas.com) is easy skinnable, SEO optimized and a completely browser based content management system based on PHP scripting language, Smarty template engine, jQuery JavaScript library and RESTful software architectural style. It is based on very common open source software and technologies and does not force programmers to use any specific programming techniques.

Supplied with CMS sample site customization may be done very simply uploading images for design update and editing style sheet variables file – that does not require any specific programming knowledge and skills. You can switch website into Christmas skin with one button touch when Christmas is coming.

Site with KUSoftas CMS may be installed on any CentOS based shared hosting server and does not require any specific settings of hosting environment.

KUSoftas CMS has some very attractive things that’s can't be found in many other well known CMS:

• As page hypertext is stored into regular file system files of website using KUSoftas CMS you can use any professional tools for content editing via WebDAV protocol such as Adobe Dreamweaver or MS Expressions Web. You can map site via WebDAV server as network drive in MS Windows or other OS and use content management or edit tools as you like (ex. Notepad++). Ant this option is available for general user not only for administrator because CMS WebDAV server is tightly integrated with CMS access control system!
• KUSoftas CMS interactive site localization tool allows to extract internalization messages from Java Script, PHP and Smarty templates into portable object files (PO) and translate into different languages. Integrated translation editor allows to translate PO messages and compile into machine object (MO) file. Perfect option allowing to avoid external tools such as GNU Gettext and PoEdit usage – that’s usually possible only for professionals.
• Hierarchical MS Windows OS like access control system based on users and assigned groups (roles) allows control access to all resources and actions in CMS and website very effective. This can be tested at http://www.kusoftas.com site in CMS Demo where all actual website (not separate demo!) with all its content and tools is open to try for everybody. You can try to delete something. That's can't be found in any CMS website in the world!
• File manager is tightly integrated with CMS access control system and allow authorize access for users and groups in even particular folder or file level. That's probably can't be found in any other CMS in the world!  You can use WYSIVYG editor from within File Manager – option that can't be found in other CMS too.
• Website skinnable option – unique option of KUSoftas CMS too.
• Professional grade CSS (SASS and LESS) support is in the core of CMS.

There are a number of useful jQuery, template and Open-Source CMS plugins in KUSoftas CMS. Some of them are very good and useful:

• Slider plugin can show slides containing text and images. Slider contains several slides transition themes containing 3D transition effect. You can update or even create new themes using plugin control panel.
• Maps plugin is very useful when adding Google map to the site page. You can find location, change scale, position, add/remove markers, add titles and it does not require to have any knowledge and skills how Google maps software work.

KUSoftas CMS features in summary:

• Can be hosted in shared resources.
• Fits wide range sites - from very small to large.
• Software platform is based on jQuery, PHP, Smarty.
• Subsites support.
• Hierarchical user and group based CMS access control.
• Integrated Web file manager and WYSIWYG editor with CMS access control.
• WebDAV server with CMS access control.
• Interactive site localization tools based on NLS.
• Integrated site search based on jQuery only.
• Professional grade CSS extensions (SASS and LESS) support.
• 100% Web based CMS management tools with drag and drop.

KUSoftas CMS is available:

• Free CMS restricted version.
• Free CMS version without restrictions for students, teachers and academic institutions for teaching purposes.
• All included for only 499 EUR price including 1 year software support for commercial usage.

Download and try it!