People always ask me my thoughts on whether they should go with a custom Content Management System (CMS) or an open source CMS like Drupal or WordPress.  As a developer I should argue that a custom Content Management System (CMS) is the way to go and is the better option for anyone looking to manage their own website. By convincing clients to go with a custom built CMS, developers lock in clients for the long term. Why? Because custom code is like a custom designed dress or piece of art – not many other professionals will want to mess around with another person’s original work. Granted, you MAY find someone who is willing to tackle the challenge of deciphering and/or reworking someone else’s custom code.  However, chances are that you’ll also be paying double, if not triple what you originally were paying your first developer. Not to mention the fact that custom CMS’s tend to cost more up front to begin with.

I’ve dealt with MANY open source systems and MANY custom systems in my career.  In general, my experience with custom CMS systems has not been very good. I have had clients whose original CMS web development companies went out of business and needed to have their website rebuilt from scratch. Another company upped the maintenance three times the amount their clients were originally paying, and another company had their system hacked…

I will admit, there are  advantages to both custom and open source content management systems, along with the disadvantages to both. There are times when a custom system makes more sense. However, 9 out of 10 times I will never recommend doing a custom CMS in all honesty. Here are some things to consider while deciding which CMS is best for you.

Price

Price is a huge factor in everyone’s decision. What will be cheaper for you in the short term and/or the long term?

Custom: Companies try to justify unreasonably high costs for a “custom” CMS in saying that they are building you a system from scratch.  Well, most of the time these companies aren’t even building all these components from scratch. Most companies already have a base that was built, that they say is from “scratch” but it really isn’t.

Open Source: Anyone that says open source is free is wrong. It’s not free, but it most definitely will be cheaper to go with an open source system that already has the core of what is needed to develop. So now you are just paying your developer to install the system and theme it, rather than paying someone to create the system, install it, and then theme the system. With open source you basically knock out a step.

Faster To Build

One key factor in your decision could be how fast you may need your website up and running with a certain level of functionality.

Custom: Everything has to be built from “scratch”. I’m not sure how one can argue that a custom CMS would be quicker to build. They could run into one small problem and be stuck for days, weeks, or even months. Not only that, but if you want specific features that they do not already have capability of, they will have to build it from the bottom up. There’s no searching for already built modules, as there would be with open source.

Open Source: Developing in open source is basically like buying a bed from IKEA. You take it out of the box and assemble it to look the way it’s suppose to. It’s much faster than building the bed from scratch (as if you were to go to Home Depot, and buy the plywood, glue, nails, etc.). By using an open source system you are provided with the tools you need to succeed and a ton of support to get the job done quickly and efficiently.

Scalability

Some developers will argue that by using their custom CMS they can do anything you want. Using an open source system like Drupal, so can we! With the right amount of time and money you can do anything in an open source system. But what’s the big difference?

Custom: If you want something added to the system that is simple, but still has not been built by the developer and it’s not in their “library” your going to have to pay that developer to develop this module.

Open Source: If you had an open source system 8 out of 10 times there already is a module built for exactly what you want, and if there isn’t they can take a module that already is built and modify it to do what you need. Plus there are so many users that use open source, that there are constantly developers out there developing to make the system better and more secure.

Security

Some of the best programmers have been hacked. Remember, there is always someone out there smarter than you. Therefore, you are always susceptible to getting hacked regardless of whether you are using a custom or an open source CMS.

Custom: So you go with a custom CMS and your not technical at all… How do you determine if this developer is skilled enough to build a great system that is secure. What if their idea of a CMS is a crappy back end that just allows you to edit text. And they leave the entire back end open, or they don’t encrypt the passwords (believe me I’ve seen a few of my current clients’ past systems and it has happened!).

Open Source: “Open source is insecure….” First off, this is a common misconception. It obviously depends on what system you use, however, it is NOT insecure. Let’s use Drupal as a great example: there are thousands of developers out there that use this open source system and keep it up to date to keep hackers out. If you use the system correctly and make sure you update the system, then you won’t have any issues.

Maintenance

You will end up paying more on maintenance for a custom system then an open source system hands down.

Custom: A custom system means you are married to the company who built your system until you decide to divorce them and split what you shared. You may be able to grab the design, but they are going to grab their custom system right back from you. If anything needs to be changed, your ex will have to make the changes (and we all know how dangerous that can be). There is no getting price quotes or potentially moving companies. You have to literally go through an entire divorce to get rid of them!

Open Source: All updates are done by developers around the world. Therefore you don’t have to pay your developer to actually update the modules. You just have to pay them to update your modules with other people’s updates. Therefore, it’s much cheaper and more readily available!  In addition, if you want something done most likely it’s already been done. So you don’t have to pay your developer to develop and install, just have to pay to install. If you want a custom module done, there are so many functions already built into an open source systems, that it’s also easier to develop custom modules as well.

Update (February 9, 2009): A new article has been written that tells how to change your favicon in Joomla! 1.5.

The word “favicon” is short for “favorites icon”, and it is the 16×16-pixel icon that is associated with your website and appears in the browser address bar and favorites menu (and in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, it also appears on the browser tab). For this website, I am using the default Joomla! favicon because this site is a site about Joomla! The image below shows what your browser’s address bar should look like when visiting this site.

All Joomla! installations come with that favicon installed, and a common mistake by many webmasters is to ignore the favicon, thereby keeping the default Joomla! icon for their site. Unless your site is about Joomla, you should not be using the default favicon. A good habit to get into when developing sites with Joomla! is to change the favaicon and use something more fitting for your site, like your logo. This article will explain how to create a favicon and then how to replace the default icon with your icon.

Creating your favicon

For the sake of simplicity, this section assumes you are using your logo for your icon.

Step 1: Shrink your logo

Using graphics software (like Adobe Fireworks or Adobe Photoshop), shrink your logo so that it will fit into a 16-pixel by 16-pixel square*. Then, save your new image as a 16×16 PNG or GIF file called “favicon.png” or “favicon.gif”.

* It helps if your logo has relatively square dimensions, like the Joomla! logo.

Step 2: Convert the image to “favicon.ico”

This step is actually easier than it may seem. There are several options for doing this step, but my favorite is a web-based tool by Dynamic Drive called the “FavIcon Generator“. You simply click the “Browse” button to locate your favicon.png or favicon.gif file, then click the “Create Icon” button to convert your image. The generator will then provide you with a favicon.ico version of your logo. It really is that simple.

Step 3: Replace the default icon with your own

The default favicon is located in the “images” directory of your Joomla! installation. For example, on this site the favicon is located at http://www.howtojoomla.net/images/favicon.ico. Remove the default icon from your site, and upload your new icon in its place.

Done.

You may not be able to see your new favicon right away. The reason for this is because the default icon is probably still in your browser’s cache. If you clear your browser’s cache, you will be able to see the new favicon.

The favicon is a small thing that really will not affect the performance and look of your site, but paying attention to little details like that will give your site a more finished, professional feel.

As always, please feel free to post any questions or comments.

Source: http://www.howtojoomla.net/2007050865/how-tos/miscellaneous/how-to-change-your-favicon

WordPress is a fantastic, easy to install application that’s packed full of useful features. It’s all ready to rock straight out of the box, but there’s a few easy customisations you can make with a cocktail of plugins that will enhance the functionality as well as offer crucial protection. This is my collection of post-install plugins that I immediately add to every WordPress install I work on – There’s no fancy gallery plugins here, just back-to-basics additions to improve speed, SEO and security.

Akismet

Akismet is so crucial to a WordPress blog it even comes pre-installed. All you need to do is sign up for an API key from WordPress.com in order to activate the plugin.

What does it do?

Akismet works on the front line in the battle against spam. It picks out spammy comments from your blog and helps protect your site against those pesky spam bots.

Download the plugin

All in One SEO Pack

Changing your Permalink structure is the first step you should take to a more optimised blog. The second step is to install the All in One SEO pack to allow complete customisation of every post and page to squeeze out the best search optimisation you can.

What does it do?

The All in One SEO pack makes a few important SEO improvements to your WordPress blog, such as canonical URL redirection and reconfiguration of page titles. More importantly it gives you complete control over the page title, meta description and keywords for every post and page so you can completely optimise your site.

Download the plugin

Google XML Sitemaps

After settings up your permalinks and installing the All in One SEO pack, all that’s left to do to completely SEO’ify your blog is to provide the Googlebots a sitemap to feast on. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin does exactly what it says on the tin…

What does it do?

The Google XML Sitemaps plugin creates and regenerates an XML based sitemap file that lists every page of your site in order of popularity. This allows the bots to easily crawl your pages, as well as quickly update changed pages in the search index.

Download the plugin

Login Lockdown

Brute force attacks are one of the most common ways blogs are hacked. One way to protect against this is with the Login Lockdown plugin, which provides a sturdy security wall between your site and the bad people by limiting the number of login attempts and blocking out IPs that exceed this set amount.

What does it do?

The Login Lockdown can be configured to allow X number of login retries. Once these retries have been exceeded, that particular IP will be locked out for a period of time (also configurable). The plugin also allows you to mask login errors, so WordPress will no longer give hackers a clue if they correctly guessed your username.

Download the plugin

W3 Total Cache

I’ve played around with just about every caching plugin out there, but W3 Total Cache definitely gets my recommendation. Caching is one of the most important additions to any WordPress blog. The W3 Total Cache plugin not only provides page caching, but also has database caching, object caching and a minify system built right in – All with customisable options.

What does it do?

W3 Total Cache speeds up your WordPress site by caching pages. Instead of WordPress making multiple calls to the server upon every visit, it displays a ready-made static file or reuses queries from the cache. This provides a huge speed increase and eases the load on your web server.

Download the plugin

WP-DBManager

Regularly taking backups of your WordPress database is as important as remembering breathe. There’s a good selection of ‘scheduled backup’ plugins out there, but my favourite is WP-DBManager. Not only does this plugin provide useful scheduling options, but it also allows you to browse, restore and optimize your database directly in WordPress.

What does it do?

WP-DBManager allows you to browse your database tables, restore existing backups, automatically optimize your database and set regular scheduled backups at interval of hours, days or months.

Download the plugin

WP Smush.it

The images you upload to your WordPress blog will account for a large portion of the load your server deals with. Smushing these images strips out the meta data, optimizes compression and removes unused colours from JPEG, GIF and PNG files, which in turn reduced their size by a couple of percent. This change isn’t huge on a per-file basis, but it all adds up when calculated across the whole site!

What does it do?

WP Smush.it automatically sends all the images you upload via the WordPress media uploader through the Smush.it API to optimize the images. You can even go back and Smush all your existing images using the handy button in the media browser.

Download the plugin

Source: http://line25.com/articles/post-install-plugins-to-enhance-protect-wordpress