Open Source Content Management System Market Share  

The survey shows that three systems have come to dominate the present market: WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. Indeed, the numbers indicate that these three systems have opened up a large lead on the rest of the pack and have emerged as the dominant brands in the market.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2008). Articles>Content Management>Software

Eight Arguments for Open Source

Is Open Source better? It's not a black and white question; the answer will depend on your needs and circumstances. Still, there are some very good things to be said for supporting Open Source and Open Standards. Here's a list of the top reasons why we prefer Open Standards and Open Source development.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Software>Open Source>Business Case

Building Usable Websites, Part 1

Usability is all about how people interact with software driven systems and how to make those systems better suited to their all-too-human users. When you hear people describe a piece of software as “user-friendly” or “intuitive”, what they are really saying is that the software exhibits good usability.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability

How to Select a Content Management System

There's recently been a lot of discussion and considerable interest in content management systems. Buyers are starting to ask for these solutions from vendors with greater regularity and the buyers are clearly better informed than in the past. Still the issue that comes up again and again is, how do you know which content management system (CMS) is right for you?

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2003). Articles>Content Management>Software

Building Usable Websites, Part 2

Over the last few years, usability practice has begun to take on a new maturity. Systems have become more formalized, practices more standardized, and in the process certain principles have risen to prominence. To get you thinking about what it means to create usable applications, here’s a list of six basic principles which should be applied when you are building software-based systems.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Usability>Web Design

Building Usable Websites, Part 3

Website and software application usability is a classic intangible, hard to measure and even harder to sell to clients or management. Ironic, as I think it safe to say that at this stage in the game there are few sites that would not benefit from a usability survey and a bit of tweaking. Nevertheless, some companies have taken the cue and great usability case studies are beginning to emerge.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2008). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Case Studies

Changing the Way We Work

The CMS market really took wing with the liftoff of the LAMP stack and the growth of a supportive development community. Suddenly it seemed everyone was producing LAMP-based CMSes under Open Source licenses.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2006). Articles>Content Management>Software>Open Source

Measuring Website Performance: Part 1

Establishing a set of reliable metrics for measuring the performance of your web site in the real world is a key success factor. In the next few articles, we will explore what can be measured, how to do it, and how to turn that data into some useful intelligence for your business.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Web Design>Assessment

Measuring Website Performance: Part 2

In this column we will continue with our examination of website metrics. Last column introduced the idea of performance metrics and the basics of what to measure. In this column I would like to go a little further into discussing the implications of those metrics.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Web Design>Assessment

Measuring Website Performance: Part 3

Your web server archives the information needed to generate these numbers and many others. The raw data is stored on the server in what is known as a log file. The statistics referenced above are best accumulated through the use of a log analysis program to convert your hard-to-read server log files into an understandable format.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2004). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Log Analysis

Ready for the Enterprise?

A quick look at ten Open Source Content Management Systems which are beginning to find their way inside Enterprise IT Departments.

Shreves, Ric. Water and Stone (2006). Articles>Content Management>Open Source>Workplace