Make a website for free #3
This entry was posted on October 16, 2007
In the second part to this series I covered online generators. Lil suggested I cover Content Management Systems (CMS) in this next part, so here goes!
This little gem of a blogging engine has been written from scratch and recently revamped by a lovely young lady by the name of Jenny. Using PHP and a mySQL database, Jenny gives you the ability to add posts to different categories, offer your visitors the ability to comment on your blog entries, an RSS feed (for comments and for entries), an optional comment captcha to help prevent spam, and a basic WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
Wordpress is what I like to call the “Grand-Daddy” of content management systems. Not only does it let you blog, it also lets you add static pages to your site which is where the real “content management” comes in. FanUpdate is more of a “blogging engine” as it controls only your blog entries. Wordpress goes the full hog and gives you everything you could need! It’s free and comes with a massive long list of plugins you can use to give your site even more functionality. It really is the “bees knees”.
I used FanUpdate for over six months before making the switch to Wordpress. FanUpdate is a wonderful script and I would recommend it to everyone who likes to have total control over their static pages and layout, as it is so easy to integrate to your current design.
I switched to Wordpress because I liked how easy it made things to update my site and add new pages. A few code snippets in the theme, a few code snippets there and I had complete lists and links to my sub-pages.
Making your existing layout fit around Wordpress, however, is easier said than done! Wordpress “themes” are very dynamic in that once your layout is made up of various “template tags” which add the content dynamically from the mySQL database everything is stored in. Fascinating stuff really, if you’re so inclined as to be interested in the back-end workings of your site.
There are of course hundreds and hundreds of free Content Management Systems out there - which one do you use?
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