Matt Foster's Web Marketer | Add a Blogs or CMS to your website

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Add a blog or CMS to your site.

Joomla CSM emblem | Add Blogs & CMS | Home Internet Business.info If you've ever been to a site where visitors could leave a review, a comment or any other form of interactive content submitted to the site, then you have been on a CMS site. Most people refer to them as blogs (web logs), vlogs (video logs), comment sites or wiki sites. All these kinds of sites are technically called CMS (content management system) sites because they allow interaction between the end user and the web site administrator. Most modern E-commerce sites are CMS sites. Sites such as Netflix, Blockbuster and even Youtube are types of CMS sites.

Now why would an Internet marketer want to create a CMS site? Well for starters, search engines love them because they contain dynamically created content. Most of them use MySQL and PHP to accomplish this and as such grow into massive beheomeths of content. Soon they become packed full of inbound and outbound links. New content comes in the form of webmaster posted blogs, information articles, visitor posted feeback, blog visitor comments, user reviews, photo additions, and the list goes on.

You have probably been to or at least heard about Youtube.com. Youtube is in fact a video CMS site or video blog. It uses PHP, MySQL and FLV video content uploaded by users to the Youtube servers to create dynamic page content and videos for everyong to see. It's member database is another aspect of it's interactive nature. It's databases grow in size as I type. Not only with user uploaded content but with the membership of users themselves.

So if you've decided you want to get into this web 2.0 CMS stuff and start creating your own interactive sites, it is possible and there are systems available. But as of this writing (July08) I have yet to see a free hosted CMS solution for web marketers. And as for CMS integration into web development applications the most popular ones (Dreamweaver, Front Page, XSitePro 2) technically haven't arrived yet for the mainstream user.

Of course if you want to go ahead and get your feet wet you can certainly start with a standard free hosted blogging, photo or video site. If you are technically experienced there are free CMS software out there as well.

Free (Open Source) CMS Software -

For advanced users. This means you must install, and configure the CMS software on your web host's server. Make sure your web server is running LAMP (a Linux OS, Apache web server, MySQL and PHP). You may have to go into your web host's control panel and activate or set up your MySQL database and PHP services. Then you must design your site to your tastes.

It's not rocket science and the software comes with detailed instructions so if you are familiar with your web host you shouldn't have any problems. If you are a newb, you can try to set it up but you will more than likely run into scenarios where you won't know what to do and have more questions than answers. You can always try it. Just follow the instruction and if you get into trouble call tech support. If they provide PHP and MySQL then more than likely they will help you trouble shoot any problems you might have setting them up or installing the software. Be nice...it helps. :)

Here is a list of most of the CMS software available today. Some CMS are free in the list and some are proprietary.

Free Video Sharing Software -

PHP Motion

Again, as with Wordpress this software must be installed and configured by YOU.

Free Site Comment Software -

Give your site visitors the ability to leave comments and ratings.

HALO SCAN

Free CMS Site Building Software -

Wordpress

Wordpress is probably the most popular, and powerful free CMS blogging software available to date. It allows users to leave comments on any page of the blog. This function can be turned off by the site admin. Once installed you must design the site yourself. There are free Wordpress templates available which make this quite easy. And More free WordPress Templates here.

Dot Net Nuke

DotNetNuke is another open source CMS web application framework which continues to grow in popularity. DotNetNuke is written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. DotNetNuke's application's content management system is extensible and customizable through the use of skins and modules. It can also be used to create, deploy, and manage intranet, extranet, and web sites.

DotNetNuke has about a dozen basic modules which are included with the core DotNetNuke distribution. More modules can be downloaded from the DotNetNuke website including e-commerce systems, photo galleries, blogs, forums, wiki and mailing list options. Additional third party modules are provided by both the open source community and proprietary commercial developers.