Open Source Content Management Systems for SMB

Project Name: Draft Paper on Open Source Content
Management Systems for SMB
Document version: 1.0
Prepared for: Presentation at Linux Asia 2006
Prepared by: Rahul Dewan, Suman Debnath
Srijan Technologies Pvt Ltd, India; www.srijan.in
Date: 06 January 2006

Purpose of this document
This document is a draft paper for presentation at Linux Asia 2006, prepared for review
and approval of the conference organising committee.

Project Name : Draft Paper on Open Source Content Management Systems for SMB Page 1 of 10
Document ver : 1.0
Customer : Presentation at Linux Asia 2006 Copyright © 2005 Srijan Technologies Pvt Ltd. www.srijan.in

1. What ails Indian websites
Clearly, a majority of websites of Indian companies are not ready for attracting business -
national or international. We do not mean “E-Commerce ready”; but a large number of them are
not even ready to generate enquiries and leads from their website. In order to be able to have
website business ready, for receiving enquiries, they must have:

1. good content strategy, intuitive navigation and pleasant visual designs
2. well managed content; updated regularly
3. be well promoted in search engines
4. possible use of customer relationship tools to handle business enquiries
transparently/with accountability

Typically, all these basic requirements are missing, in most Indian websites. The most
neglected is content, which is central to the whole exercise. Even if the navigation is intuitive,
and visual design is done to acceptable levels, the content is normally very dated in most
websites originating from India - Govt, NGOs, Education and Research organisations and even
businesses.

2. Requirements of a typical Website
Relevant well-managed and regularly updated Content is central to the success of any website,
whatever its purpose maybe - information dissemination; generate business enquiries; generate
user feedback; build a community.

Consider a business website, of typically any business - IT, Tourism, Manufcaturing, Trading,
Print Media (wishing to publish their content online - maybe subscription based) or Services. All
these businesses need to do all or some of the following:

• announce new products/highlight old ones
• talk about latest news and events
• list all services offered - which may change, as your business grows and evolves
• maybe post Job openings
• post some recent articles or Case Studies
• Maintain your contact information (with the changing TRAI policies, nos. of private
companies are changing too frequently for comfort - if not your letterheads atleast the

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website must have latest phone nos.)
• have a SiteMap (possibly a Google compliant sitemap), which gets updated easily
• promote this website in Google (website should be Google friendly)
• Have human readable URLs which can be individually marketed (unlike complex id
strings that appear in most database driven websites)

Additionally, you may have some of the more complex requirements:

• Department Heads should be able to update and manage relevant portions of the
websites
• Website should be multi-lingual
• Feedback forms, or Sign a Guest book; enquiry Forms
• Send out E-Newsletters (HTML formatted with Images or Plain text - maybe offer that
choice to the customer)
• Allow people to subscribe through the website; and unsubscribe when they
recieve an e-newsletter
• Manage job postings frequently, with online applications reaching different departments
within your organisation
• Some CRM functionality
• E-Commerce ready website
• Some specific software requirements for making the website interactive for a customer,
such as generate printable PDF catalogues of your products real-time (updated with
latest content and product pictures as updated on the website); OR setup a database of
members, as in the case of a networking/community portal

3. Infrastructure to manage all this
You probably know all this and have burning business needs - but may have the following
concerns:

• implementation of such a large-scale websites are too high
• even if one time implementation done, dependence on technical people, for
maintenance, remains (who swith jobs far too often for anyone’s comfort)
• an alternative is to outsource to a web agency who will help you maintain. Well,
ofcourse, they are quite expensive as well, and do not, very often, have a reasonable
turn-around time

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4. Enter - Content Management Systems
Manage Content Yourself! CMSs enable you to do that, and as simplistically, as you would
manage Documents or Spreadsheets.

But what about the Licence Costs for such CMSs? If you are a Print Media company, it is very
likely, that you have explored some CMSs on the market, and the License costs are
unbearable. Listed below are some Commercial CMSs. The cost of these commercial CMSs
ranges from US$25,000 to US$200,000. (CMSWatch also has a comparison list of features of
different CMS products. Typo3 has most features built-in or as extensions that cost extra in
commercial CMS products i.e. not covered by the base price)

Enterprise CMS:

• Documentum
• Interwoven
• Vignette

Upper Tier:

• MS - Content Management Server
• FatWire
• IBM Workplace WCM

Mid-Market:

• CoreMedia CMS 2005
• Red Dot

Classification taken from : http://www.cmswatch.com/CMS/Report/Vendors/ Costs are not
surveyed; based on reports available on the Web

5. Enter Open Source GPLed Content Management Systems
Well mostly, all GPLed CMSs are available free or atleast some core is available free, with add-
on features being commercial open source. Here’s a list of some popular Open Source CMSs:

• Typo3
• Drupal
• Plone/Zope
• eZPublish

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• Midgard
• OpenCMS

6. Typo3 Open Source Content Management Framework
Our presentation is focused on Typo3, as we’re experts in this framework. Some key
advantages of Typo3: (Please see http://typo3.org/about/statistics/)

• Very well-documented Open Source project
• Over 11,000 ready-to-implement (out of the box) extensions for immediate use in your
website
• Granular Access Control
• A predictable development Roadmap for development upto 2007 (your investment is
safe)
• A huge developer community of over 20,000 (and growing, even in India; there is a
TUG India)
• An Association (called the Typo3 Association) with democratically elected members,
who give direction and do development considering future needs of businesses
• Some wonderful Core Applications such as Digital Assets Management, Database
Abstraction, Workflow Engine, E-Commerce, others are built-in, which will make it
one of the most advanced ready-to-implement CMS across industries

7. Out of Box applications
Typo3 has a simple extension deployment mechanism in any website – connect to the
Extension Repository from within Typo3 Ext Manager and choose an extension. No copying
files/folders etc.
Let's have a look at some of the important extensions in Typo3 or those built by us:
Extension name Description
tt_news Touted as a CMS within a CMS;
News, Article management
TemplaVoila A new template mapping tool which includes an API for
using the results (Template Objects) and a new content
element for flexible content.
Get a website within 3 minutes;
tt_products E-Commerce plug-in; Multiple product categories;
Referrals discounts mgmt, Gift Coupons; Bulk purchase
discounts; integration with 3rd party Payment gateways

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Extension name Description
Newsletter Send out TML/plain-text newsletters to subscribers
base; Subscribe/UnSubscribe; Analytics
HtmlArea RTE Rich Text Editor based on the open source htmlArea
editor.
PDF Generator Uses open source FPDF Library; another version with
PDML being written.
Allows real-time generation of Invoices, Product
Catalogues, in custom layouts
Documentation Center To make a centralised Document Creation/Update
system; DocBooks > LaTex > PDF; An online Open
Office.

8. Other Factors

8.1. Security

8.1.1. Security Team
Security is taken very seriously by the developers of TYPO3. The visible part of that concern is
that there is an explicit TYPO3 Security Team. URL: http://typo3.org/teams/security/.
TYPO3 Security Measures include
• Security reviews for the TYPO3 core
• Security as a major part in TYPO3 extension reviewing
• Monitoring and response to potential security issues
• Enhancements in TYPO3's security features
Security News: http://news.typo3.org/news/teams/security/)

8.1.2. Security Update Process
To continually address Security concerns, there is a Typo3 Security Team, formed by
volunteers from around the world, which addresses Security Bulletins issued by testers and
implementers from around the world.
With the help of teams, volunteers, consultancies, and independent developers, over the years,
TYPO3 has become very mature in many respects, one of which is the seriousness that is
being put on security matters. The current release 3.8.1 contains several improvements listed
at:
http://news.typo3.org/news/article/security-bulletins-important-security-enhancements-in-typo3-
3-8-1/.

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8.2. Performance
The following charts were generated using a test with 300 concurrent users (front-end) and 5
backend editors. Interpreted as visits, this adds up to about 4,000 visits per hour. This test
was done on a Dual Xeon 2.6 System with 4-GB RAM, on Linux running apache 1.3.x, php
4.3.x, MySQL 4.0.x. A test setup including a complete TYPO3 3.7.0 (extensions: real_url,
index_search) with about 240 virtual hosts and 20,000 pages was installed on the server.
Please note the Maximum Hits (HTTP Requests) of 123 per second, which Typo3 was tested
at. This proves the reliability and performance Typo3.
Squid and other Caching mechanisms
Using Squid or other Caching Mechanisms, or possible use of the commercial Zend Platform,
can even further enhance its performance.

Source: http://tuga.at/uploads/media/paper15.pdf

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9. Case Studies

9.1. Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd
BTVL had a website which was completely in HTML. Maintenance was done by their internal
resources, and updates were cumbersome and irregular. Their Investor community's surveys
ranked the website very poorly.
Srijan, with its skill in Usability and User-Centred design, visually made the website pleasant
and investor/media centric, and implemented Typo3 CMS for maintaining it on an ongoing
basis.
• During Quarterly announcement, there is a window of only a couple of hours and all
documents have to be readied on the website, within this period as announcements are
made.
• Typically, this would have required good co-ordination of a team of a 2-3 people web
team.
• Right now, 1 person from Srijan manages this single-handedly.
• Communication to Investors on important Press Releases is regular and seamless
Although BTVL is yet to implement a CMS on its Airtel websites, a user-experience on a
competing company had the following experience:

This company has recently updated their website. This has enabled users to view and manage
their accounts. However they have not managed to take into account a few simple details. Like
when you try to view your monthly bill online you are provided with a “the page cannot be
displayed” popup and a message “To view your bill in shortest possible time please go to Tools
on your tool bar and select Options. Choose privacy and set it at “LOW”. Why do we need to
change the privacy settings to view a page on a site one has logged on ?

This shows a decided lack of thought and putting together pages on a piecemeal basis. With a
CMS plus a validating server like A-Select (if necessary for advanced validation), we could
avoid this break in user expectations.
In an enterprise CMS like Typo3, you are not creating physical pages as such rather a node in a
page tree. Also, it encourages and goads the users towards a very structured page system.
Also, Typo3 has its built in granular access control system. So such weird situations though not
impossible but highly improbable.

9.2. Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations
CISCE wanted to have a student portal, and make the website increasingly interactive. We had
been maintaining the website in 2003-04 as well, and after a decent design, as the content
grew, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the website.
All Notice and content uploads had to be done manually because of restrictions of both
technology and funds, available with and to us, respectively.
We convinced CISCE to LeapFrog to Typo3, and use it slowly steadily to build a big student

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community online. Results:
• Content Updations are now seamless, without intervention of HTML/FTP tools
• CISCE personnel are happier having access to management of Notices themselves
• Planning some major Student-School initiatives
• Online Forms for entry by schools are being designed, to cut out on the physical filling
and tracking

9.2.1. BSG Institute
They are an organisation (HQ – USA) building online communities of professionals in Business
Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture; having regular publications of White
Papers, Articles, Presentations, etc. and have a subscriptions based model. Earlier websites
were becoming unmanageable, as new requirements and new business initiatives kept cropping
up.
Moved to Typo3 – convinced by a partner company in USA.
• Have now over 6 websites, with cross-publication of articles, presentations, white
papers, others; Featuring these on any of the websites centrally through a common
team of Sales personnel
• Built modules for allowing sponsors to put up their own articles, papers, etc.
• Featured articles are managed in a complex process across websites seamlessly
• Discussions on to deploy a Single-Sign-On, “A-Select” server for allowing Sales people
to navigate between sister websites seamlessly

10. Who is using Typo3?

10.1. Businesses
• Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd
• Dassault Systems
• New York Times
• DHL
• Volkswagen
• 3M
• GE
• T-Mobile
• Omega Watches

10.2. Social
• UNICEF, Germany

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• MAPPA Asia

10.3. Government
• Munich City, e-Governance apps
• Dutch Government, Education initiatives across all schools in Netherlands
• US Air Force (under construction)

10.4. Education and Research
• CISCE
• Stanford
• Harvard
• University of Frankfurt

11. Live Demo
Time for a Live Demo... (7-8 minute demo)

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