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Whatever your market niche, a content management system, more commonly referred to as a CMS, is an essential tool for your online business.  While there are seemingly infinite choices when it comes to selecting a CMS, each offers the ability to simplify the task of managing the daily operations surrounding your website.  The top five industry and user favorite CMS systems include: eZPublish, Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress.org and Movable Type.

Understanding CMS Software

The overall concept of a CMS is to provide for a system which separates design from content, yet function cohesively to publish both creations together.  A reputable CMS should bring four core functions to your online venture: Content creation, content management, publishing and presentation.  Within each of these four categories is the ability for storage, organization, creation, publication and development.  Although typically used for blogs, a CMS proves to be just as useful for developing and maintaining websites, e-commerce, as well as marketing a product or service.  Most CMSs are an Open Source software system that’s based on PHP and requires a MySQL database.

Many online business owners opt for a CMS because of the ease and convenience it offers when developing or updating a website or blog.  In fact, users aren’t necessarily required to be proficient, or even understand, HTML coding or other advanced programming languages.  CMS content may be viewed as online news and entertainment articles, instruction manuals, how-to guides, and informative brochures in a wide array of formats including web content, e-documents, as well as data, media, audio and video files.

Benefits of a CMS

Besides making the task of managing a website much less complicated, a CMS also offer other valuable benefits.  One such perk is offering built-in applications such as blogs, contact management, databases, forums, calendars, mail forms, newsletters, search engine, product management and a site map for easier navigation.

Security is another benefit of utilizing a CMS.  The basic security features include: login history, content approval, e-mail verification, SSL compatibility and session management just to name a few.  Commerce capabilities are another huge CMS advantage.  Those seeking an e-commerce venture appreciate features such as affiliate tracking, shopping carts, wish lists, inventory management and pluggable sales’ transaction data information.  Finally, support is yet another benefit of using a CMS.  The power players in the CMS industry understand with the fluidity of code being updated, users must have quick access to dependable support options. As a user, you can expect to find readily available online manuals, commercial support and training, online assistance, professional hosting, and the developer community.

While the complete list of benefits far out cedes our scope here, regardless of the CMS you opt to use to make life simpler, you can be confident that a CMS is essential for doing business in the 21^st century!

Everywhere you look someone is talking about “going green” and making changes to help improve the environment. Well, the web hosting industry is no exception. SuperGreen hosting is the only provider in the industry that has begun to make major changes to focus more on the environment and reducing their carbon footprint.

The company has gone 100% carbon neutral which helps them to have a zero negative impact on the environment. All offices, servers, and datacenters are powered by solar or wind energy. Based out of the United Kingdom with offices in the United States, SuperGreen is extremely new to the web hosting industry and has been providing an environmental focus since conception.

SuperGreen only provides one hosting plan that is suitable for any website that is small or medium. You get many benefits with this plan including:

• Unlimited domains
• Unlimited databases
• Unlimited email addresses
• Domain for lifetime
• Website templates
• Suit builder
• E-commerce tools
• PayPal and merchant account support
• Instant setup

Despite all these features, the plan is still affordable at $6.95 per month. However, there is an on-going promotion for $3.95 per month that still includes all the features listed above.

Industry-leading cPanel is the control panel used on all servers. Within this software you are able to manage all aspects of your account and quickly install various scripts and applications. Email setup, site statistics and script implementation are all a breeze with cPanel software. Additionally, there are plenty of add-ons for WordPress, Joomla and other programs.

Also, SuperGreen guarantees an uptime of 99.9%. SuperGreen servers can be accessed at any time of day all year round. Additionally, the company has top-notch customer service representative’s ready 24/7 to help you with any issues you may have. The technical staff can be reached via phone, email or live chat online.

The low cost of hosting at SuperGreen would make you think they are considered a cheap web hosting provider. However, the features and applications that accompany the monthly plan prove otherwise. Since they operate in such and efficient manner with self-produced energy, they are able to keep their prices lower than competitors while managing to improve the environment.

SuperGreen hosting is an excellent web hosting provider that all webmasters should try due to the number of features received vs. the price and the zero environmental impact they have.

While Expression Engine is not nearly as popular as other content management systems like Joomla WordPress, and Drupal, it is quickly gaining popularity as more people become aware of its extensive benefits. Expression Engine’s user interface is incredibly user friendly and is ideal for both novice webmasters and advanced web developers alike.

After examining the user interface for more than a coupe of minutes, virtually anyone with the smalls amount of technical experience should be able to express themselves freely through the Expression Engine control panel. The following will review the overall functionality of Expression Engine, in comparison to some of its more popular competitors.

Managing Multiple Sites with Expression Engine

Expression Engine has many revolutionary and unique new features that webmasters and developers will love. For example, the software supports the management of several web sites simultaneously through a centralized control interface. This is a huge time saver and productivity booster, especially considering that most of the other CMS on the market do not support multi-site management out of the box. The software makes it easy to manage your network of sites using features like the global find and replace, which lets you perform a find and replace on all of your web sites instantaneously. Never before has there been a content management system that simplifies the administration of multiple sites like Expression Engine.

Developer’s Features in Expression Engine

Developers love Expression Engine because it provides unparalleled flexibility when designing new web pages, due to the highly compatible templating system that the software is based on. Thus, Expression Engine is an ideal solution for professional web developers that need a platform to express their art form through. If you’re tired of the restrictions that other CMS place on your development capabilities, you may want to consider the flexibility and simplicity of Expression Engine, which is being expanded upon every day. Since Expression Engine is an open source software, the team f developers that work to improve it is expanding every day, along with the feature list of the software and its overall functionality.

Is Expression Engine Free?

Expression Engine is one of the few content management systems that has a free and paid version. The free version provides enough power to manage and create web sites, and can be compared to conventional content management systems. The free version of the software can only be used on a couple of web sites, while the commercial version of the software (which costs about $100) can be used on an unlimited amount of web site, and there are no usage restrictions. Professional webmasters and web developers should definitely consider the added advantages of using the paid license of Expression Engine, rather than a free version or a conventional CMS, which bears significant functionality limitations. Considering that Expression Engine is one of the only CMS on the market that is not free, it is easy to see why so many new features are added with each update.

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems available on the internet. It is a vast system with a large amount of information such as, content, images, audio and video clips. As a result, it is important to optimize websites created in and for Joomla. There are five specific tips for optimizing a Joomla website including:

• Joomla sh404SEF
• Enable Joomla Search Engine Friendly URL’s
• Duplicate content issue
• Practice proper content writing
• Insert H1 tags

The first tip is to download and install the Joomla sh404SEF plug-in. This allows you to create your own URL’s and set meta tags and title tags. Additionally, the plug-in adds enhanced security features to protect each page. This is widely considered the best plug-in available for Joomla because it makes website extremely search engine optimized.

The second tip is to enable Joomla search engine friendly URL’s. Joomla allows its users to have advanced customization to create the website of your dreams. When using the system, keep in mind that search engine friendly URL’s are not enabled by default. You must turn them on to optimize properly. This is important for those that generate pages automatically. These usually contain a ‘?’ which is overlooked by search engine indexes.

The third tip is the duplicate content issue which is automatically generated by Joomla .PDF pages. The sh404SEF plug-in alleviates some this issue but not all. Duplicate content occurs due to print icons on every .PDF webpage. Search engines index these and recognize they are the same across many sites. The best method is to not publish these in the Joomla.

The fourth tip is to utilize proper content writing when creating a Joomla site. After enabling the search engine friendly URL’s, Joomla will create clean URL names that humans and machines can easily find. The final tip is to insert H1 tags throughout the website. This will improve the searchability, especially in Google.

Once you get these tips down pat, creating a searchable Joomla website will be a breeze. Fully implementing these tactics does take a bit of practice and finesse however. Joomla continues to be one of the top content management systems available due to the customization, functionality and scalability of the features and thus each website. Hopefully in the future they will be able to fix some of the minor issues that plague content creators.

Content management systems are integral tools needed for the management and building of professional web sites. Without a good CMS, most web site owners would not be capable of setting up their site and maintaining it on a daily basis, as that would require a great deal of technical knowledge and persistence. Fortunately, there are developers out there that understand the frustration of not having the skills necessary to create and operate sites, and as a result the internet has witnessed the invention and advent of several notable open source content management systems.

Open source CMS are different from conventional CMS because they can be expanded upon by any developer with the knowledge and willpower to do so. Rather than being limited by the core features of the software, webmasters can use open source software to enhance their web site management capabilities, and even build new content management systems around the core system. If you would like to take advantage of such a software then you may want to consider the advantages of the following top three open source content management systems.

WordPress

WordPress is by far the most popular and powerful CMS available today, especially with the release of the revolutionary WordPress 3.0 that surfaced just a few months ago. WordPress has a larger plugin library than any other CMS, which means you don’t have to start from scratch just because the software is an open source platform. In fact, there are currently thousands of plugins available for WordPress that improve nearly every aspect of site management and creation, including but not limited to search engine optimization, site design, and site navigation. If you are looking for a reliable open source software that is easy to use and renowned for it user-friendly interface, then you should definitely consider the benefits of WordPress, the number one open source content management system.

Joomla

Joomla is similar to WordPress in that it has a large library of plugins and optional modules available that enhance the functionality of the software. However, Joomla is not as user-friendly as other CMS because it is primarily geared towards professional developers that need a robust development platform through which they can design high-tech web sites. Unfortunately, Joomla is not made for amateur webmasters and is a bit more restrictive than WordPress, which is why it has earned the second spot in the open source CMS review list.

Drupal

Drupal is one of the best open source CMS available, primarily because of its incredible capability to replicate the functionality of all other CMS, within a slightly more complex interface of course. Unfortunately, this functionality cannot be realized by the average webmaster, simply because it is such a unique CMS that has its own development language. Experienced web developers may find that they like Drupal better than the above two CSM, as it is possible to create pages that are beyond the standard templating structure of a conventional content management system.