Review of open source content!

You need a content management system (CMS), but you don't know which application framework to choose. The software must be free and open source, with a web-based user interface. Perhaps your employers have already mentioned that they want to avoid committing to a proprietary, closed application. With all the choices available, it can be daunting to choose one.
Whether you want to build the next big social networking site or a personal weblog, there is a CMS for you. Rather than searching for the CMS par excellence, choose the solution that best fits your project's requirements.
This article provides an overview of five of the top open source software (OSS) solutions: CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and XOOPS. I describe their differences and similarities — based on my personal experience — to help you choose.
The similarities
All five OSS applications are free and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Their server-side code is written in PHP, and they use MySQL as the database. And all five are operating system–independent.
Software bundles such as WAMP (Windows), MAMP (Macintosh), and LAMP (Linux) make it easy to install the set of components (usually Apache, MySQL, and PHP) that make up the web server infrastructure.
All five CMSs have:
Online communities that provide free support via forums
Developers who contribute modules to add new functionality
Human-readable and search engine–friendly URLs for search optimization
Web browser WYSIWYG interfaces for site maintenance
Themes and templates to update the page design
Translations and multilingual content integration
Syndication of site content in RSS/XML feeds
They can be used to create the following and more:
Blogs
Contact forms
Events calendars
Guest books
Image galleries
Online newsletters
Search engines
While these five CMSs have many similarities, each one also has unique benefits and limitations. The following sections describe each application and make comparisons based on my experience.

CMS Made Simple
CMS Made Simple and Drupal both include workflow engines for process management beyond basic approval of content. You can get up to speed much faster with CMS Made Simple, but Drupal has far more features (which you may or may not need).
I found that setting up a CMS Made Simple site was very straightforward, but not nearly as easy as using WordPress. Creating site navigation is easy, and you can quickly launch a simple site.
CMS Made Simple, Drupal, and WordPress all follow the W3C specification for XHTML compliance.
Theme templates enable you to easily update your site's layout, and modules extend functionality.
Unlike the other CMSs, CMS Made Simple does not offer support for creating the following features:
Forums/discussion boards
Tests/quizzes
Wiki sites
System-wide content versioning
E-mail verification (using an activation key)
On the support forums, there's a great deal of activity in the German language section, which creates a bit of a barrier for English-language speakers. The documentation is not as extensive as the other CMSs reviewed in this article, so accessing help in the forums is essential.Sample site: Russell Davis Architects

Drupal
Drupal is pronounced droo-puhl. (To hear the correct pronunciation, listen to the Drupal song.) This CMS won Packt Publishing's Overall 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award.
Drupal has extensive online documentation, supplemented with active forums, and Drupal.org is chock-full of instructions, such as the Drupal Cookbook, to help you get started.
I've found that Drupal is flexible and accessible, while being fairly easy to use as a powerful solution for a wide variety of projects. However, its vast feature set may be too much of a good thing if you are only planning to build a simple blog.
Unlike the other CMSs, Drupal offers some database replication for better scalability. And only Drupal supports NTLM authentication.
Drupal includes a PHPTemplate theme engine to create custom themes. PHP code snippets are used to define the look of the site, and are kept in a presentation layer — enabling designers to own the page layout without interacting with site functionality code.
After installing modules, the process of enabling, setting, and configuring permissions feels a bit redundant. Locating the areas to perform each of these tasks in the Administration menu can be challenging until you have done it a few times.
Drupal really shines in the way taxonomy and permissions can be assigned at a granular level. Rather than being limited to groups, individuals can each have their own access levels. And the level of categorization in Drupal is unlimited, so you can set up infinite views.
Drupal's global developer community participates enthusiastically and contributes new modules with add-on functionality at an amazing rate.
Sample site: FIEL

Joomla!
Joomla! is a forked evolution of Mambo. The differences between Joomla! and Mambo are subtle to the end user. Joomla!'s administration panel has been redesigned, but the primary difference is the large online community involved with Joomla! that is committed to the principles of open source development (there is a frenzy of activity on the Joomla! forums).
Developers create free extensions to add functionality, and these are available in the Joomla! extensions directory. It is worth noting that, for now, extensions that work with Mambo also work with Joomla! without requiring modifications, although this may change in future versions.
Joomla! supports e-commerce functionality, such as shopping carts, inventory tracking, and payment processing through third-party vendors. However, taxonomy is an area that could be improved because you are restricted to only a few levels. This may or may not affect your development — depending on the levels of categorization you need for your site.
Although I haven't experienced it myself, I have read that sites with high traffic report slower load times. I have also found the WYSIWYG editor to be less intuitive to use than the other CMSs I evaluated.
Sample site: ArtSessions.net

WordPress
Since 2003, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted blogging software in the world, visited by millions of people every day.
Due to its popularity and longevity, there are more themes available online for WordPress than for any other CMS I investigated. The ThemeViewer is a great way to find one to use for your site.
According to WeblogToolsCollection.com, 0.8% of the Internet is run by WordPress. They project that at the current growth rate that number could reach 2–2.5% in a few years.
There are many online resources, such as the very clear online documentation, the WordPress Podcast, and plug-ins you can download to extend functionality.
Some high-traffic sites report slow performance, but by installing the WP-Cache plug-in and doing some tweaking to the wp-config.php file, you can enable caching to help increase load times. Many online tutorials address this if you happen to run into this issue.
Sample site: Ford Motor Company

XOOPS
Pronounced zoops, XOOPS is very customizable for controlling the layout of content blocks. The modules, while not as numerous as some of the other CMSs, are easy to install. Future versions promise to add even more Web 2.0 functionality, which is exciting.
The official home of XOOPS has recently been relaunched, and you can visit the XOOPS Foundation site to get more information. Additionally, many modules are available at the XOOPS Addons repository.
Like Drupal, XOOPS has a template engine (named Smarty) to help you customize page design while keeping the presentation code separate from the functionality.
XOOPS and Drupal both offer the ability to display product information and can also manage inventory — making them good candidates for building e-commerce sites.
XOOPS is popular globally, and it is nice to see such a variety of translations for both the software and the user documentation. However, that can also be a disadvantage if you are an English speaker because there is less online support.
Sample site: Concrete Connections
Where to go from here
Drupal, Joomla!, and XOOPS are best for building an e-commerce site because all three offer:
Inventory management
Support for third-party payment processing mechanisms (such as PayPal)
Modules for shipping and sales tax calculators
Shopping cart functionality
If you are looking to build a single blog website that doesn't need all the bells and whistles — then I recommend WordPress. It's easy to use, has a huge collection of available themes, and is XHTML-compliant.
I tend to agree with Packt Publishing's award. I think Drupal is the best overall CMS available — based on its high level of customization, flexibility, scalability, taxonomy, SSL support, e-commerce functionality, and extremely enthusiastic user community that develops modules and provides technical advice and support.
I hope this has given you some sense of direction as you navigate the many options and determine the CMS that best suits your requirements.

Indian Political Foes File $100 Million Suit Over American Newspaper Ad!

Windsor Genova - AHN News Writer

New York, NY (AHN) - An affiliate of a political party in India has filed a $100 million libel suit in Manhattan against rival party supporters who criticized its leader, Sonia Gandhi, in a newspaper ad in October.

The Indian National Overseas Congress, composed of supporters of the Indian National Congress (INC), took issue with two supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party for placing a $65,000 ad in the New York Times during Gandhi's visit to New York City in 2007. The ad pointed out that the INC chair was not related to Mohandas Gandhi, who led India's independence from British rule.

At the time, Sonia Gandhi was attending the commemoration of her namesake's birthday at the United Nations in observance of the International Day of Non-Violence, a movement Mohandas Gandhi formed.

Sued were former law firm secretary Narain Kataria and retired insurance agent Arish Sahani. Their lawyer described the lawsuit as INC's attempt to silence its critics in the U.S.

Dr. Surinder Malhotra, head of the INC subsidiary, said the unprecedented suit has nothing to do with the party in India, according to NYSun.com.

Malicious software threatens internet economy!!

National economies and security interests face a growing threat from malicious software, says a damning report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Communities involved in fighting malware "offer essentially a fragmented local response to a global threat," says the report, which urges international cooperation to combat the danger.

The report cites evidence that around one in four personal computers in the US – or 59 million – is already infected with malware. A booming market in cyber attack software and services has also made attacks more sophisticated and cheaper to perform.

Day of the 'zombies'

Malware is commonly used to turn ordinary PCs into "zombie" computers, which can then be controlled by criminals over the internet without their legitimate owners' knowledge. These machines are used to send out roughly 80% of all spam and to attack commercial websites and other internet-linked systems with meaningless traffic as part of extortion schemes.

An army of remotely controlled PCs – known as a botnet – can now be rented for as little as as 33 cents per machine, far less that the actual cost of the hardware.

The largest botnets on record have comprised more than 1 million computers. While the number of machines corralled into botnets is increasing, the OECD found that botnets themselves are shrinking to avoid detection.

Rather than launching high-profile attacks to bring down a target, small botnets can subtly reduce the target's internet service over a prolonged period.

Most malware infections (93%) occur on home users' computers. However, OECD research suggests that this can have a knock-on effect on national industries reliant on online transactions such as banking. For example, malware may deter people from using the internet to access more efficient savings products.

A group of British banks put the cost of malware for 2006 at £33.5 million, 90% higher than in 2004 and growing. But such estimates do not include indirect costs such as losing the trust of consumers, the OECD points out.

International rescue

Thirty-eight countries around the world now have national bodies focused on computer security. But the OECD says international organisations and agreements are needed to properly measure the impact of malware attacks and counteract them.

Just weeks ago NATO opened its first "cyber defence centre". It is located in Estonia, which saw its entire internet service crippled by botnets in 2007 after a diplomatic row with Russia.

The full OECD report Malware: A security threat to the Internet economy is available online. Ministers from the OECD's 30 member nations will discuss malware later this month at a meeting on the internet economy.