A website becomes dynamic and easier to access by users with the Content Management System (CMS). Users simply need to add content from a UI interface because the necessary source code is already in place at the website’s backend.
Within some period of time, as web technology grows bigger, there are many types of CMS either maintained by the community or a single company. The community plays an important role to maintain and to develop what we call Open Source CMS. This article will give you more insight into the Open Source CMS, its advantages, and its examples.
What is Open Source CMS?
A Content Management System where the source code is made publicly available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute is called Open Source CMS.
The community of developers from across the globe maintains it, where everyone can access it, and also adds new functionalities or features. Basically, anyone can use this Open Source CMS however they like.
What makes a big difference between an open-source CMS with a proprietary CMS is the cost to use the platform on an ongoing basis. An exclusive CMS is maintained by a company that doesn't share the source code with the public and is often tailored to focus on specific businesses.
The Advantages of Open Source CMS
Since the Open Source CMS has so many advantages, then it is worth giving it a try. which we shall discuss in this part.
Flexibility
The Open Source CMS gives you more flexibility in adding new features. The modularity of the Open Source CMS allows you to add more functionalities and options using plugins, modules, or extensions. You can upgrade your CMS or change your developer agency anytime without hassle with the available plugins or modules from the official CMS web directory.
Continuous Improvement
As the Open Source CMS is maintained by a community of active developers, you can always have regular updates for free. The constant updates are generally an improvement of the open-source codes to fit with the most recent development best practices. As a result, any issues and bugs can be immediately fixed.
In addition to the community, ongoing improvement can also be provided by your own developers, as they can quickly produce any Open Source CMS code changes or modifications that your company actually needs.
The global developers of Open Source CMS often meet in regular conferences to share ideas and discuss the unlimited possibilities to adjust and keep up with the newest technology. Open Source CMS users will surely have many options to maintain their website’s back end, with this continuous improvement.
Low Cost
Another advantage of using Open Source CMS is how less costly it would be especially when your website is considered as a small business scale. A subscription or paid plan could be applied when you need more functionalities or features and this would still be much cheaper compared to when you use proprietary CMS from the beginning.
Plugins, Modules, or Extensions of Open Source CMS are designed so that a company doesn’t have to build specific functionalities from scratch which will cost more money. The open-source codes are flexible and easy to upgrade for further development.
Public Support
A good Open Source CMS would have an active support system that is maintained by an active community of developers. You can always reach out for any help or support within the community forum for any bugs or issues. Often you would have fast responses from the community or directly from the CMS official developers.
There’s a massive number of tutorials available on the internet such as video tutorials, blog articles, online workshops or courses, and many more. These resources are easy to access and they are mostly free, hence every user can learn some tricks and tips to use a specific Open Source CMS.
Source Code Ownership
Open-source CMS developers make their code available for usage and modification by others. A developer community could result from this, where programmers collaborate to create the CMS software or application and provide support for users.
One more advantage of using the Source Code CMS is there’s no need to buy the source code license to run your website. The source code is available to the public and free to use by anybody with some limitations. The most popular license types are GPL, MIT, and Apache.
Examples of Open Source CMS
1. WordPress
The most well-known open-source CMS is certainly WordPress. It is frequently mentioned as having a market share of more than 40% for CMS-based websites and powering many kinds of web blogs on the internet.
WordPress CMS is fairly flexible and it’s easy to use, as you can build an eCommerce website, a portfolio website, a web gallery, or many other types of websites. You can install some WordPress plugins in order to build a website with different kinds of functionalities. WordPress is a CMS platform built on MySQL and PHP.
