Wordpress blog software has its origin in Michel Valdrighi’s b2 software. In 2003 b2 became the genesis of WordPress www.wordpress.org, a fork project using the b2 source code, which simply had fallen behind web standards and on which no further development was planned. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, two bloggers, began developing WordPress and were soon joined by Valdrighi. It took a year, but WordPress’ versatility and open source nature, combined with a decision by the developers of Movable Type to radically raise prices for their software, led WordPress to be one of the frontrunners in blogging software.WordPress’ value lies in its easy customization. It seems like there is a plugin for everything: Akismet (akismet.com) catches spam, podPress (podpress.org) turns a WordPress installation into a podcasting platform, etc. And it only takes a little knowledge of PHP to write your own plugin. WordPress is routinely used as a content management system for websites not meant to act as blogs - it can be used to create a directory just as easily as it can be used to post updates to a blog.

There are some video-tutorials for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 at the end of the full article. Check them out!

Just What WordPress Needs

To run WordPress, all you need is a server that supports PHP and MySQL. While the WordPress developers recommend Apache or Litespeed web servers for users who plan to subject their WordPress installation to more than typical abuse, it’s not necessary. If you’re planning to install WordPress, you don’t even need the most recent versions of either PHP or MySQL: PHP 4.2 or greater and MySQL 4.0 or greater will work just fine.

Getting WordPress Running

For those individuals without much technical savvy, WordPress can be an ideal CMS for a single simple reason: one-click install. Many web hosts have begun offering accounts with what is essentially an automatic installation process: users simply select WordPress as their CMS of choice and the host takes care of setting it up.

If you’re interested in handling the installation procedure yourself, it’s still not overly complicated - as long as you know a few basics about setting up a website: to start, download the installation package from WordPress (wordpress.org/download/) and unzip it. From there, you’ll need to create a database for WordPress on your web, along with a MySQL user with all privileges (for both accessing and modifying the database). Rename the file “wp-config-sample.php” to “wp-config.php” and open it in the text editor of your choice. Fill in your database details.

At this point, you’ll need to decide if you’d rather have WordPress on the root of your domain or on a subdirectory. To integrate WordPress into the root, move all the files contained in your unzipped installation package (excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server. If you’d rather have your WordPress installation on a subdirectory, move the entire directory into the root directory of your web server (including the directory itself). You can rename the directory if you wish.

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Mambo is an open source content management system which is currently being managed by an Australian non-profit corporation founded in 2005. Although the Mambo Foundation http://mambo-foundation.org didn’t begin the development of Mambo, it has made the support and development of Mambo its primary objective.

Mambo is free software, using PHP and MySQL to create a dynamic web site which supports the organization and creation of documents and other content interesting to your site visitors. Because of the extensibility of Mambo, it can be used to create portals, as well as complex corporate intranets and applications.

Software and Server Requirements

Mambo is quite easy to install, and has simple server requirements. Like most PHP based GNU/GPL open source programs, you simply need a server running Windows, BSD, or Linux with the following options.

It is recommended that you have the GD, Zlib, FTP, XML, IconV, GetText, and MBString extensions as part of your PHP installation.Mambo has been designed to work with any web browser software on any operating system. You will need to test it thoroughly if you make any changes to the base software, and after you have installed any Mambot extensions.

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TikiWiki (Tiki) CMS/Groupware is an open source web-based application that you can use to build a website for working collaboratively with others. The content management system at the heart of TikiWiki powers wikis, forums, blogs, map servers, and more. You can configure the various tools and customize the appearance of the website from Admin Pages that are also web-based.

There are some video-tutorials at the end of the review. Check them out!

Wikipedia definition of a Wiki:

A wiki is a software that allows users to easily edit and link pages together. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.

Wikis are used in many businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets and for knowledge management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”

WikiWiki is a re-duplication of “wiki“, a Hawaiian word for “fast“. Some suggest that wiki means “What I know Is”. However this is a backronym(a phrase that is constructed “after the fact” from a previously existing word).

TikiWiki CMS/Groupware www.tikiwiki.org was created by the Tiki Wiki Community, and is available for free under the LGPL General Public License. The last release was February 23^rd, 2008. Tiki Wiki is a dynamic application and not a static.

You can customize some of the links and URLs that Tiki produces in order to create “search engine friendly” links. Tiki includes a “_htaccess” file that takes advantage of the web-servers re-write rules. If you would like to enable this feature, you simply rename the _htaccess file to .htaccess

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Coppermine Photo Gallery is a perfect solution for creating image / photo galleries whether your creating a gallery to share pictures with friends and family, creating a portfolio for your photography business, or creating a community for photography enthusiasts.Coppermine Photo Gallery www.coppermine-gallery.net began as the brainchild of Gregory Demar, although it’s current incarnations the results of a collaboration of 38 developers located around the globe. These developers donate their time working on one of the most feature rich Photo Gallery programs currently available on the Internet licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Directly out of the “box” Coppermine allows you to post photos in categorized galleries, comment upon and rate the photos, merge your photo gallery with a variety of Web bulletin board systems, as well as allow your visitors to send selected photos to others as eCards. As you can see, Coppermine gives you a powerful image gallery for no more cost than the installation time.

Its Free.. But Will My Server Run It?

Coppermine has very minimal server requirements. The latest Coppermine release (version 1.4.16) has tested OK on Apache (vs. 1.3.24 and higher) or IIS server that has MySQL (vs. 3.23.23), PHP (vs. 4.1.0), and GD Library or ImageMagick installed.

Although most servers have these features, you may need to check with your hosting administrator specifically about the GD Library or ImageMagick. These libraries are used to create the image thumbnails which are displayed on the category pages within the gallery.

Don’t worry about your gallery visitors; they can visit your gallery using any of the main stream browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera.

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Magento is a feature-rich, professional open source e-commerce solution that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store.

Magento’s powerful marketing search engine optimization and catalog management tools give merchants the power to create ecommerce sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Magento is distributed free under the GNU General Public License OSL license.

Magento is a registered trademark of Irubin Consulting Inc. DBA Varien. It is currently listed as in a preview release mode and not recommended for use in production environments. There are articles written by community members who have tried this new program and available for your benefit at http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/

Is this software compatible with your server?
Megento can be used on any server that is Linux or UNIX based. It can be run on a Windows based platform but at the moment there are some known issues that are being worked on and it may cause some conflicts, although, there are some documents on the main site to help. You can find some guidelines here http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-installation-guide/print

One of the known issues is the image uploads do not work in Windows.

This system is a Linux based software program and was designed with ease of install on a Linux based platform that has PHP 5 installed. This software is a PHP 5 only application and may cause issues if your system only supports PHP 4, although there is a work around solution found here http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/installing-magento-on-a-php4-server

If you do not have any programming knowledge or skills, this system may not be suitable for you unless you have a technical support team who can assist you.

The server requirements for this software are:
- Linux or another UNIX-compatible operating system
- Apache web server (1x or 2x)
- PHP 5.2
- MySQL 4.1
- A sendmail- compatible Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)- if not Megento connects to SMTP server.

Also recommended is the use of APC as a bytecode cache for performance improvements. You can find it in the PECL archives here: http://pecl.php.net/package/APC

Other bytecode cache systems are not supported at this time.

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