Open source content management systems (CMS) are growing in popularity. Why? What gives them an advantage over a traditional web site? Here are a few reasons.

First, they give you control over your own site. You don’t need to depend upon a webmaster to maintain your site, nor do you need to rely upon an outside professional whenever you need to edit or add content. With a little training, you’ll be able to keep your site up-to-date without the fear of messing up its design or underlying structure.

Second, Open Source CMSs are as affordable as you can get: they are “Free Software“!  Setting up a website, hiring a regular webmaster, and paying to optimize your search engine results—these can add up to a lot of money, money that small organizations often don’t have. CMSs enable people with smaller tech budgets to set up and maintain a web site. Initially it’s still helpful to hire a professional to help with setup and to customize your site to create the look and feel you prefer. A good designer will guide you through initial setup and provide training on site maintenance. But from there, with a CMS you will rarely need to call on a professional, so you’ll eliminate the need to pay a webmaster’s monthly fee.

Third, CMSs allow web work to be performed by more than one person. This is especially helpful if your group is a collective or a community-based organization. Multiple contributors, with differing levels of access if need be, can add and/or change content.

Finally: By choosing an open source CMS, we are not only utilizing Open Source and “Free Software“—we’re contributing to it, too. The Free Software Movement is a community of programmers and users committed to user freedom and sharing, not hoarding, information and ideas to create a better product. The result is better quality software developed by the people who use it. This was the original model for software development, and luckily it’s a model that still thrives even in a world dominated by profit.

Note to the reader:  There are some very important philosophical differences between Open Source and Free Software if you would like to learn more about the differences please visit their sites or wait for my upcoming blog on the subject.