More for Less: Open Source Web Development

by Webfusion in Online Business on February 19th, 2009 1 Comment

Today, the open source revolution has opened up new doors for affordable web development. For web developers and small businesses, this is great news: you can access and customize professional applications, with similar features to professional applications, at virtually no cost. As a result, the on-line playing field is more level than ever for startups and entrepreneurs. At Webfusion, we want to kindle those aspirations by introducing you some high quality open source applications that can help take your project to the next level:

Joomla
A leading open source publishing CMS, Joomla can be used to develop rich media sites for nearly any purposes. As an entirely open source system (licensed as GPL), you can customize the software to your needs by incorporating social profiles, e-Commerce features, business listings and news updates. For small businesses and aspiring web publishers, Joomla is a flexible framework with an active developer base.

Sugar CRM
For businesses looking to streamline their sales and customer support operations, Sugar Customer Relations Management brings many of the primary features of Sales Force into the realm of open source. You can install the basic Sugar Community Edition, providing you with lead and sales tracking from prospects to active clients in a single, back-end system. Small businesses, along with start-ups, looking to expand operations should look at Sugar for their business needs.

Drupal
For those looking for a bit more complex of a CMS, Drupal can handle more heavy weight LAMP (Linux, mySQL, PHP applications. Built on an open source framework, a number of leading publishing sites utilize Drupal and there are even innovative extensions, such as Drigg, which allows you to create a Digg-like social news site.


One Response

  1. 1
    Joshua says: March 19th, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Great post Bradley. I would also highly recommend WordPress.com (http://wordpress.org/) as an open source CMS system. I know what your thinking…what if I do not want a blog. In my opinion, the variety of templates (called themes at WordPress) gives users the ability to create new pages, organize/categorize their own unique content and to re-publish syndicated content, manage outbound links, etc. The installation is not too tough, but freelance WP installers are pretty cheap and easy to find. Once installed, the ‘backend’ control panel for WordPress is very easy to navigate, and the learning curve is not too steep. A nice benefit is all of the plug-ins and add-ons for SEO, anti-spam, link management, user (poster/editors) management and much much more. WordPress seems compatible with almost all hosting environments.

    One thing to look for when choosing open source tools and applications is whether or not there is good documentation and a strong community of user with the same tool. Because open source means “free”, it means you may form time to time need to participate in the community of fellow users to get advice and assistance. Users of open source software and technology should also periodically make sure they have the recent version of the tool they are using. I am not one to jump on the latest version the same day it is released, but at least 2 times per month seems to be my own ‘update cycle’.

    Hope this helps. Keep up the juicy postings!

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