A trend toward creating websites for the masses without knowing a line of code seems to be catching on. I will briefly highlight the three platforms that many organizations are using, and without going into too much detail, I will describe some of their attributes and inroads they have made in the web development community.
Several content management systems (CMS) have amassed a large following in the past several years, including WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. These three are at the top of the list, but there are plenty of others out there to choose from. Each of these systems utilizes a graphical user interface that bridges the gap between coding your own and getting content into production. If you are creating customizations of themes and templating, this still requires coding, but many folks use these platforms straight out of the box.
There are benefits to these systems and while some of them do require a longer and steeper learning curve, with little skill, you can have a decent website up in hours or days.
WordPress
WordPress, the semantic personal publishing platform, for example, is probably one of the easiest for the novice web designer. Many hosting providers will automatically install WordPress and set up the MySQL database for the backend — all you have to do is assign an administrator, a few passwords, and you are all set. Adding content is easy with the dashboard; type or copy text or code by hand, and you are done. WordPress also features an import and export utility that is helpful. And now that WordPress is into version 3.01 it has moved from the “best blogging platform” and into a full-fledged content management system. Examples of organizations that currently utilize WordPress for their web development platform are
Reuters,
Flickr,
Harvard Law School,
OpenID, and
2Advanced Studios.
Drupal
Several United States Federal government agencies are using Drupal as their web development platform today, including the White House website. The EPA is currently looking into using it for its public website. Drupal is currently used by many other well known sites such as
Grammy.com,
Intel,
AT&T, and
CNNGo.com, to name a few.
Joomla
Joomla is a more advanced CMS, and its functionality requires a bit more expertise than, say, a WordPress installation, but it still offers an easy interface to quickly build inventory control systems, data reporting tools, reservation systems, integration for e-commerce systems, and custom product catalogs. Joomla CMS platform is currently utilized for powering these sites:
Deep Purple (that’s right, the rock band),
Epson R&D, and
Porsche Brazil just to name a few.
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