Benefits of Using an Open Source CMS

What Are the Benefits of Using an Open Source CMS for Your Business Website?

Businesses of all sizes should consider an Open Source CMS for their website needs when it comes to security, custom development as well as ongoing support.

Did you know that the three most popular content management systems are run on open source software? It’s true!

Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress all use open source software to power their frameworks and give end users software for free or nearly free.

Meanwhile, developers take advantage of the fact they can go into the source code of the frameworks and create their own products to work with these popular programs. The end result is a seemingly endless selection of themes, plugins, and widgets that simply work when you install them onto the software framework. And if it doesn’t? You can go back to the well and find something that does. It’s just that easy.

Open source software offers the same benefits as closed source software with an additional angle: Developers tend to support their work for far longer than closed source software providers. That means you get the security and comfort of knowing you can keep using something that works perfectly for your needs for as long as you’d like. Why? Because you can always find someone to work on the code even if the original developer has decided to stop supporting their software.

Here are just a few organizations and institutions that use the WordPressopen source cms to power their websites:

As you can see, these are some pretty big players, and they’re all using WordPress. Thousands of organizations just like these use open source cms to run their websites because they are more often than not; easier to customize, typically more cost effective, easier to support and maintain, and usually integrate with 3rd party apps and software much better.

With open source software, you can keep your software up to date, never worry about obsolescence, and don’t have to keep learning how to use new programs because a developer doesn’t want to support its older products. Check out the infographic below to learn more about how open source software has changed the way people build websites.

Using the traditional monolitic approach whereby you build, manage and publish your website on a single server, there is a more distributed approach whereby you build your site on a Static Site Generator, publish the site on GIT repositories and host the site on a Content Delivery Network.

Choosing between a Git-based CMS or an API-driven CMS

With a Git-based CMS you can publish content every time you push changes to Git, allowing for a seamless development workflow. This approach is a bit difficult to scale with content that you want to publish across different platforms, but it will allow for you to have a purely static website. Since it runs on Git, you won’t have a problem finding an open source CMS to work with.

With an API-driven CMS, you’re creating content that will be strictly delivered via APIs. Although you won’t be able to keep track of content changes through Git, you’ll be able to scale your content through flexible APIs. But since you are working on a platform that hosts these APIs (server bandwidth ain’t cheap) these tend to not be open-sourced and rather pricey, but some offer freemium pricing models.

Or use WebriQ CMS, which in essence can be an API driven Git-based CMS.

Exciting times for all front-end developers and for business owners who want to simplify their web operations with secure, reliable and ultra fast technologies.

- Get the White Paper, “The Benefits of Open Source Software” from our friends at CopyPress.