Comparing Open Source CMSes: Joomla, Drupal and Plone

Open source content management systems can make creating and managing your website a lot easier - and there's no licensing fee involved. But which should you use? We look carefully at Joomla, Drupal, and Plone to compare their strengths and weaknesses.

Bonfield, Brett and Laura Quinn. IdealWare (2007). Articles>Content Management>Software

Creating the Relationship-Centric Organization: Nonprofit CRM

Are you storing data about your constituents in three, five, even ten different databases? If so, you're not alone ' but it's costing you in time, lost revenue and decreased impact. Paul Hagen describes how to get all your data into one place with an integrated CRM strategy.

Hagen, Paul. IdealWare (2006). Articles>Information Design>Databases>CRM

A Few Good RSVP Tools: Online Registration Options for Free Events

When you're planning a free event, it's hard to justify paying a lot of money for online registration software--but email or Evite can be frustrating. Happily, other choices exist. We talked to seven nonprofit technology experts about useful and affordable (or free!) options for collecting RSVPs for free events.

IdealWare (2006). Articles>Project Management>Software

Getting Started with Blogging Software

We reviewed and compared the seven tools most frequently used to create a blog. Which are easiest to get up and running, or to tailor to match your site? Which has the best comment moderation features? Reporting functionality? We'll give you all the details and recommend a tool for you.

IdealWare (2006). Articles>Content Management>Software>Blogging

Power from the People: Assessing the New Online Participatory Tools for Your Organization

New online participatory tools like blogs, YouTube, and MySpace can be powerful and valuable--if they mesh with your goals. Colin Delany walks through the benefits and costs of common participatory tools and suggests which are likely to be useful for you.

Delany, Colin. IdealWare (2006). Articles>Content Management>Community Building

Top Ten Mistakes When Selecting a CMS

Selecting a content management system (CMS) can be a complex task, and organizations often run into pitfalls with processes, politics, and understanding the CMS environment. James Robertson outlines a common-sense approach to avoiding the most common mistakes.

Robertson, James. IdealWare (2007). Articles>Content Management>Assessment

Vendors as Allies: How to Evaluate Viability, Service, and Commitment

When you're using enterprise software to help run your organization, the software vendor becomes a key ally--and the right relationship may be as important as features or price. Steve Lancman and Steve Heye recommend methods for comparing the intangible aspects of vendor services.

Heye, Steve and Steve Lancman. IdealWare (2007). Careers>Management

Comparing Open Source Content Management Systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone  

In this report, we take a look at four different open source Content Management Systems—WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Plone—and rate them on a variety of criteria, including system flexibility, features, ease of use and the availability of support. We chose these systems because they’re the most popular four in the nonprofit sector today, according to our analysis (see Appendix C for more details on our market analysis). We also dig a little deeper into what open source is all about, and how a CMS can help streamline processes. We even take a look at some vendor-provided systems, along with a few other open source ones, in case you don’t find what you’re looking for among the four original choices.

Murrain, Michelle, Laura Quinn and Maggie Starvish. Idealware (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source