EB Strada Philippines: Blog

Our review of content management systems

Having had the fortune of using lots of content management systems in the past, I now know what is good and what isn't.

We have used Drupal, Joomla, OpenCMS (Java), and MODx.

Starting off with OpenCMS. I'd publicly like to say that OpenCMS is the WORST content management system that I have ever seen or used. It is overly complicated for the sake of being overly complicated (especially the fact that you need to create a DTD for custom content) and lacks any form of decent documentation. I highly suggest never touching it. We were so disappointed when we tried it out (as there are not many other Java alternatives) to find that it was almost impossible the create customized modules in.

Joomla is next in line for the "worst" awards. Actually, its no where near as bad as OpenCMS, but its not far from it. The problem with Joomla is that it hasn't got a good separation of the HTML from the business logic, particularly in its modules. This means that if you want to theme your site, you have to hack the modules to look the way you want them to.. this means that when you upgrade Joomla you also have to patch all the files you changed... this gives Joomla the second worst rating. However, the good thing about Joomla is that everyone uses it so if you have a site that doesn't need much customization.. its not too bad.

Drupal isn't a bad content manager, however, as it was originally used for news articles / blogging its not much good for anything else. It has very nice code (its all function based, there is no OO code in drupal) and they did a pretty good job on the security (passing fields through XSS screening functions etc). However, its not a great one for customizing again.

MODx is our preferred content manager. This content manager is fully customizable.. and we haven't had one single problem with it yet. We have converted across 4 websites from another (lacking) CMS within a few weeks. We created many custom modules as well, all of which we had no major dramas with. If you want a highly customizable website, MODx is your CMS of choice.

Online billing management system for invoicing

We traditionally used to invoice our customers with MYOB or something from a Word document. The problems of tracking invoices, raising new invoices and creating invoices from anywhere became a problem. We found a fantastic tool called phpBMS which is an excellent system that lets you create recurring invoices that can be exported to PDF files. You simply list phpBMS with your cron jobs and it will check for recurring invoices that come up, then you are notified by email once they are ready to send. This application has simplified what would have otherwise been a very time-consuming process.

The phpBMS site is at www.phpbms.org

Better analytics with StatCounter

Google Analytics is a great service, it lets you visually see what is happening with your website as far as where traffic comes from and it has some fancy graphs. However, it is slow to update, lacks detailed information (such as IP addresses) and I also find that its hard to navigate.

We found out about StatCounter which provides very similar information (but in more detail) at a much faster processing rate. It is a free service and I highly suggest using it in conjunction with analytics (especially if you have adwords campaigns).

You can visit the website at www.statcounter.com

How to submit your website to thousands of Internet directories

Website Submitter is a tool (for windows) that lets you submit your website to thousands of online directories. The difference between other bulk submission systems and Website Submitter is that it has a built in web browser and regularly updated directory lists that helps you automate the process of entering your submission details. Website submitter will fill out all form details (if it can) and if it can't, you can right mouse click to enter the details of your submission in each form field. Once you have completed your submission, simply click the "next" button to go to the next directory add url page. You can view an online video demo of it here.

Sharing documents using the Internet with Dropbox

Dropbox is a new system (still in Beta) that allows you to share files over the internet, integrate those files with your file system, show changes to files in real-time and sync files by sending the differences (thereby saving bandwidth). This is one hell of a sweet system and could be beneficial in many ways for people who have distributed offices. You can sign up at www.getdropbox.com

SEO Optimization with RSS and rssHugger

Building your page rank is all about increasing the number of back-links with relevant keywords. With this in mind, we set out to build our new website with an RSS syndication feed so that relevant content would link back to us.

Along the way we ran into rssHugger.com which has a good reciprocal service where if you write a blog article about their service, they will syndicate your RSS feed.

Our plan is to list with many directories like this in order to increase our own SEO page rank. Reciprocal linking is some of the kind of work that one of our Virtual Workers could do for your business!

Remotely Managing Desktops - The Easy Way

Remote management of desktops has always been a perilous and expensive experience. Most applications are hard to configure and understand. We ourselves have tried most of the leading solutions, including VNC, Crossloop, Yuuguu, DimDim and many more without any major success at overcoming the complexity or reliability of each one.

Introducing RemoteX, a plugin for Skype (which we also use extensively). This is one hell of an easy tool to use. It is the ONLY free, easy to install and configure, reliable and just simply works system that is out there. The only catch is that its Windows only, which is no good for people who use Macs often. However, I highly suggest visiting the website and installing a copy of this in your office.

If you want to do video conferencing at the same time, no problems... you can control the remote users desktop and talk face to face at the same time! Skype and RemoteX are two pieces of amazing software.