As an open source content management system (CMS), Concrete5 helps users reduce the cost of developing and managing a website. At the same time, it simplifies the development and management of web applications by providing several robust features as well as community and enterprise support. These features make many businesses prefer Concrete5 over other popular content management systems.

Themes, Add-ons, and Extensions

Concrete5 allows web developers to quickly create websites using a number of free and commercial tools. Similarly, developers can easily add functionality to a web application using a number of free and commercial add-ons. Themes and add-ons allow developers to quickly create custom websites without writing additional code. At the same time, developers can extend the CMS using enterprise extensions such as internationalization, HTML exporter, and multi-step content workflow.

Content Editor

The content editor provided by Concrete5 helps programmers customize a website to meet specific business needs. The WYSIWYG content editor also allows developers to customize a website without writing or modifying code. It also has robust features such as contextual editing, easy theme management, and dynamic forms. Programmers even have the ability to drag and drop blocks of content in a template.

Style Editor

Cocrete5 allows developers to customize the design of the website using different fonts, layouts, and colors. Developers can further edit these elements using the style editor provided by the CMS. The style editor further simplifies website customization by providing features such as image editor, videos, gallery, blocks, stacks, templates, and page layouts.

Optimization for mobile devices

Concrete5 allows developers to optimize websites for mobile devices using responsive web design. Developers can also make web pages look good on different devices using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In addition, they can optimize a web application for mobile devices using the features provided by Concrete5 – adaptive images, adaptive layouts, adaptive video and mobile navigation / menus.

Form Builder

Concrete5 allows users to accelerate digital marketing campaigns by dynamically creating forms and surveys. Programmers can use the form builder provided by the CMS to create forms and surveys without writing additional code. Additionally, users can collect user data more efficiently using the features provided by the form builder – customizable form fields, form validation, error detection, and drag and drop.

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Since 2009 the system was divided into two branches: Evolution and Revolution. The first one is based on the original code, but the developers stopped supporting it (the active community took over). The second one was rewritten from scratch, and updates are released for it, including blocking system vulnerabilities. At the same time both branches are functioning and have their own audience.

ModX was appreciated first of all by professional developers, who note cross-browser and cross-platform. That is, it is convenient to work with the engine in any environment. It is also easy to expand the functionality using a variety of ready-made modules and plugins. With their help you will be able to solve problems of any complexity.

With the use of ModX you can develop a corporate website, entertainment blog with a large amount of media content, lending, online store, news portal, etc.

Unlike other free engines, ModX does not offer ready-made templates. But this does not mean that you will have to buy them separately or develop them in-house. The engine is made so that you can pull any HTML-templates on it. As a result, you will have a lot of layouts, including free ones. However, note that customization will require skills with HTML and CSS, which is unlikely to be possible for beginners.

A professional designer will definitely not encounter difficulties in adapting any template for ModX. The only thing that can go a little wrong is the need to learn the structure and syntax. They are different from those presented in other engines. Beginners, however, will have to seriously study the documentation and watch a lot of video tutorials.

One of the updates opened the possibility to use the FRED visual editor, which has a drag-and-drop interface. It functions in much the same way as website builders. That is, you will be able to customize pages manually by dragging and dropping elements and changing their appearance. For deep customization, you will still have to interfere with the source code, and here you can’t do without HTML/CSS/JavaScript knowledge.

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The first thought of creating such a platform came to Christopher Manu back in 1998. But then he was busy in other projects, and the idea remained unrealized. A couple of years later, Daniel Kerr, a British developer, became interested in the idea of creating an engine for e-commerce projects. In 2009, he managed to launch a complete system. At the moment, the most current version with the latest updates – 4.0.1.1 from August 2022. Now the service is freely available under the GNU General Public License – a universal public license.

Minimum requirements for normal operation of the system:

• server: Apache, recommended by developers;
• PHP: from version 5.3 and later;
• database: recommended – MySQLi.

With Opencart you can create an online store of any complexity. The system allows you to accept payments, manage and process orders, and for this you do not need additional extensions. These features are the basic functionality by default. If you need to customize the project to your needs, you can add special plugins.

Those who have programming skills can make changes to the source code. Opencart software is written in PHP, so knowledge of this language will be useful.

If it is not possible to edit the code yourself, the addition and expansion of functionality can be delegated to programmers. There are a lot of specialists ready to work with this CMS. The Opencart community has more than 110,000 members. In addition, there are enough resources, training videos and articles on the Internet, and the service’s website has detailed documentation.

Who is suitable for CMS Opencart

Opencart is a platform for those who want to create a ready-made online store without significant financial costs and as quickly as possible. The system works on the principle of “easy to install, easy to use”. In practice, it is so. Easy-to-use interface allows you to launch the store in the shortest possible time and within a week to get the first sales. And technical support is ready to answer any question of the developer.

On the one hand, Opencart is suitable for beginners. Since CMS is free, in case of failure the losses will be insignificant. On the other hand, even a beginner will need to independently install plugins, upload products, customize the site, find a suitable hosting and much more. That is, Opencart is an ideal solution for entrepreneurs who have experience in e-commerce. The system will also appeal to those who have a team of specialists who can be entrusted with the tasks of setting up and managing the site.

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TYPO3 CMS is a good platform for a medium or large project, a site for which flexibility and extensibility are important. Of course, the flexibility of the engine means that it must be handled by a competent person who can understand the customization system and understand how TypoScript works.

If you are a customer (or just thinking about what to create a website on), TYPO3 CMS will suit you if:

you have a medium or large budget for creating a website;
your site is not an online store or a social network;
the number of pages will be approximately average (not small – 10-20, but not large – 5-6 thousand);
you will not use the built-in CRM.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t implement the above written on TYPO3; it means that implementation will be problematic, so it’s easier to take some other, more suitable CMS.

To summarize, TYPO3 is a great fit for medium-sized companies.

TYPO3 CMS extensions

Extensions are plugins that can be selected in TER and then installed via TYPO3 CMS using the Extension Manager in the menu. TER is the TYPO3 Extension Repository and it can be found here. This is the official collection of extensions for TYPO3.

As in other CMS, here extensions have the most different functionality: some of them affect only the appearance of pages, others are responsible for internal features; most of them affect the internal and external sides of the site (we are talking about news, galleries, etc.). You will have a large scope for customizing these extensions.

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Important features – a large number of ready-made templates for stores, free access to full functionality and an unlimited number of products that can be added to the catalog.

Users appreciated the rich functionality “out of the box” – a lot of extensions, which makes it possible to create a website with minimal knowledge. Immediately available analytics of sales, orders, average check, visits, conversions. Search engine optimization at all levels is also available. The separation of user rights and built-in payment modules are very convenient.

All this is important for a new online store, but the existing ones will not mind to save money by switching to PrestaShop.

Pros and cons of PrestaShop

CMS has many advantages, some not available in other engines. Specifically:

• Ease of installation. You will need to download the installation file from the official site, upload it to the admin panel of the site and then follow the clear instructions. The installation file is small, so it can be downloaded even with a slow connection.
• Price. Free platform is one of the most important arguments in favor of PrestaShop. You do not need an online merchant license to install the store.
• Ease of use. Clear interface and simplicity ensures that even a beginner will understand the functioning of the engine. You do not need any special knowledge and skills to launch an online store. Monitor and maintain the performance of the site without problems. Today PrestaShop has more than 25000 plugins available.
• Easy customization. You can adapt CMS to the needs of a particular site, because the system is very flexible. Set and remove customizations based on your needs.
• Tools for customer retention: base, mailings with promotional offers, work through social networks.
• Global coverage. Support is provided in 70+ languages. Online store on PrestaShop in USA, India, Germany, China, UK, Japan, Canada have shown its effectiveness.
• Integration with Google Analytics – get detailed statistics of site visits.
• Payment reliability. This is one of the most important advantages for e-commerce. For your site you can connect a reliable payment gateway and install different payment methods. For example: PayPal, Skrill, Klarna, Bitcoin, Payments and others. When making a payment, there is no redirection to an external resource – the user remains on the payment page.
• Plus PrestaShop has ready-made solutions. Especially relevant are free advertising tools, such as automation of tracking emails, promotional offers, vouchers.

There are disadvantages in PrestaShop too, although they are much less than advantages. The first problem is the limited scalability. The engine is good for small and medium-sized businesses, but for large projects its capabilities are not enough.

The second disadvantage is too simple design. On the one hand – this is good, because it is easy to find the required sections of the online store. On the other hand – for large businesses CMS PrestaShop is too simple, it may seem that the site does not look professional.

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Adding new categories, pages and products, as well as their editing, is done directly in the admin panel. Here you can also manage add-ons, customize templates and much more. If we consider this approach from the technical side – the absence of a visual editor directly on the product pages gets rid of unnecessary scripts, which often become a stumbling block on the way to productivity. After a little studying the basic functionality of the engine it becomes easy to manage, as there is literally nothing superfluous that could affect important performance indicators.

Admin panel design

The admin panel of Magento is made in the classic style for such things. When logging in, the user gets to the Dashboard section, where the summary information about the events on the site is collected. Here you can view the number of purchases, identify products that are sold more often, find out the average check and determine the most popular requests.

The main menu is located on the left side and is divided into several categories:

• Dashboard – store summary;
• Catalog – divided into sub-items “Categories” and “Products”, here you can add new products and categories, as well as adjust them;
• Costumers – information about site visitors;
• Content – here you can customize the visual part of the online store, you can customize the look of individual pages, as well as connect or disconnect individual widgets, users can also add in this section of the pages of the Landing format or make blog posts, which are then displayed in the news;
• Stores – a particularly useful section for owners of multi-language online stores, where you can translate and make regional add-ons for each of them;
• System – a tab containing the main engine and system settings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Magento provides standard tools for search engine optimization of the site:

• Changing the title and description of each page;
• Changing the visibility status of the page;
• Adding keyword phrases;
• Customizing the robots.txt file;
• Adding a sitemap.

Using the canonical link meta tag for categories and products.
Including canonical links helps to eliminate the creation of double pages. This is a common problem in online stores, where there are similar or identical products with different attributes.

If the store is large, it is useful to use automatic generation of metadata. Magento has this feature “out of the box”. In the standard configuration there are also tools for changing the site map.

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Optimization includes at least three stages:

• Forming aliases – synonyms of addresses assigned to units of content;
• Adding metadata for search engine optimization;
• Setting up a sitemap for better page indexing.

All content placed on the engine is a node – a unit with a unique address. Between themselves they differ only by numbers at the end, so it is difficult for people to make them out, and even more so to reproduce them. This also affects the perception of content by search engines, whose algorithms are aimed at bringing the most informative and user-friendly pages to the top positions.

You can change machine addresses to CNC manually when publishing. But this is quite a painful task, and practice shows that users constantly forget to rewrite the URL. Automation of aliases creation helps to solve the problem, which can be implemented through a combination of modules Token, CTool and Pathauto. In addition to installation, you will have to customize the template, but in any case it requires less effort than manual editing of each address.

For proper indexing of pages under the editor window there should also be fields with metadata, in which the title, description and key phrases are specified. The standard Drupal functionality does not provide this feature. Modules are also used to add metadata – especially common is a pair of Metatag and Real-time SEO. Each of these applications has its own settings, through which you can fine-tune their work.

Another important part of optimization is the formation of the page map. This also requires a module called XML Setup. After its installation, the main page will be automatically added to the map. You will have to manually specify other sections created before the installation of the module. However, after the module is installed, the addition process will become automated.

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It takes time to get used to the Drupal interface. It is logical enough, but the abundance of functions and settings complicates the task for novice webmasters.

When installing Drupal already has a standard set of modules with which you can manage the site. These include:

• Tracker for tracking new products;
• Block for displaying content on pages;
• Color for changing the color scheme of the site, if the theme provides such an opportunity;
• Image for image processing;
• Node for adding new content.;
• Search for organizing site search;
• System to manage system settings;
• User to manage registered users;
• Locale to select language packs;
• Path to rename links;
• Update Manager for checking for updates.

These modules form the core of the system. However, their functionality will not be enough to, for example, launch a store. This requires add-ons, which can be downloaded from the engine’s official website. Applications offer different tools, so you need not only to read their descriptions, but also to study forums and various guides to customize sites on Drupal.

For example, here is what store modules offer:

• convenient shopping cart and checkout page;
• buyer’s profile with information about his actions;
• order tracking system;
• online payment of goods;
• automatic change in the cost of goods depending on the selected currency.

You can search for modules suitable in terms of functionality or immediately download a ready-made assembly, which contains a standard set of tools. For example, a company website is built on Open Atrium. If you need a corporate portal with elements of a social network, then look at the Commons distribution. For a store you can use OpenStore, and for a news site – Drigg.

The main thing to remember is that the modules on Drupal act in conjunction, complementing each other’s capabilities. Therefore, when changing the functionality of the assembly you will have to check which modules are compatible with the set that was pre-installed. Similarly, the work on customization of the system based on the Drupal core. An example of how it looks like, you will see in the section about search engine promotion – all optimization tools are added by bundles of 2-3 modules.

It is impossible to refuse to use add-ons, because they solve tasks without which the site cannot function. For example, to manage pages and publications on Drupal there is an editor CKEditor. But for comfortable work with it requires a module ICME, which adds editing tools. To display content, you need the Taxonomy module – and so on for everything. This provides flexibility to the engine and at the same time creates a headache for novice webmasters.

Design

Immediately after installing the engine, you choose one of the standard templates, which will determine the appearance of the user part of the site. Other themes can be downloaded from the official CMS website. The catalog has several thousand templates of different levels of performance: some themes are so far behind in life that they do not even have adaptive layout, but there are still quite a lot of worthy options.

You should pay attention not only to the adaptability of the interface, but also to the structure of the layout. What number of blocks offers the page, how they are located, whether you can change their places without editing the template files.

The theme you like is first downloaded from the catalog, and then uploaded to the server through the Appearance section in the admin panel. After the operation is completed, the template will appear in the list of pre-installed design options. It’s not very convenient, but it makes you choose a theme more carefully – here you can’t switch between templates in one click like on WordPress, viewing them at once in practice.

Editing a theme is done with two main tools:

• Block Layout is a visual editor that offers the same tools as the designers. You get access to ready-made elements that can be freely dragged and dropped. These are used to form the interface of each page;
• Theme Settings – basic theme settings, where you can change the color scheme, adjust the display of pictures, set the logo and favicon;
• The third way to change the appearance is to edit the template files.

If you know how to handle HTML files, stylesheets and scripts, you will be able to customize the theme as you want. This task can also be entrusted to specialists, with the search for which is not difficult – orders for site development on Drupal is on any freelance exchange, as well as their performers.

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You can publish materials and promote the site in search engines from the first minutes of the site’s existence, no additional tools are required. But if you need to launch a specific niche project, you will have to dive into the settings and install additional plugins/modules.

Below we will consider the main steps that begin to master the engine beginners.

Where to start

The first step, as in the case of other CMS-systems for their hosting, will be to install the engine on the server. If you have chosen a quality and modern hoster, Joomla can be installed in one or two clicks from the hosting panel (using the auto-install script).

But if there is no such option, or you want the latest version of CMS, you will have to download the distribution from the official website of the developers and install the system manually. There is nothing complicated in this. Everything is standard – you need to pre-create a database, specify connection parameters to it, come up with the name of the site and enter the administrator’s data.

Editing the site

Unlike the same WordPress, Joomla does not require mandatory installation of plugins to start working with the publication. For example, out of the box there is everything you need to work with SEO (meta tags, CNC, etc.), caching pages, customizing the appearance of the theme and the output of content blocks, to switch to a secure HTTPS-version, etc.

If you don’t know how and what is organized in the system yet, install demo content. You can do it in one click (in the Sample Data block of the admin panel).

There is demo content and structure for a small blog.
There is a demo version of a multi-language site.

When you understand the structure of block output, if necessary, install and configure the necessary extensions, plugins and modules, customize the design theme, you can go directly to the process of publishing content. To do this, you first need to think about the structure of the site and create categories of materials, think about the system of additional fields (if they are needed).

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Easy installation. On most hosting Joomla is deployed in automatic mode. Some hosts even offer special rates, optimized for working with this CMS.
Convenient administrator panel, to master which does not require a lot of time.
Regular updates of the system and its components.

One of the disadvantages of Joomla – a high percentage of hacked sites. True, this is primarily due to the popularity of the system. The engine is often used by novice webmasters who do not immediately understand the security settings. On commercial systems threats are less because of the closed core, Joomla is an open book for fans of unauthorized access. In addition, vulnerabilities are often hidden in extensions, so their choice should be approached with great attention.

Problems may also arise when updating the system. The main difficulty is incompatibility of engine and plugin versions. This is especially true for free add-ons, whose developers do not always manage to release updates in time or stop supporting the product altogether. Because of this, there are failures in the work. Therefore, before updating the engine is recommended to make a backup copy and disable all plugins, and then include them one by one, checking the performance.

Dissatisfied with Joomla and many professional developers who believe that the CMS structure has flaws that complicate its customization, and excessive code in the templates and the engine itself lead to slow loading pages. However, on the popularity of Joomla these shortcomings if and affect, then minimally – the system continues to be used to implement a variety of ideas.

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