phpWCMS Web Hosting

phpWCMS Web Hosting

phpWCMS is an open source Web Content Management System. It functions well on just about on any web server platform that supports PHP with MySQL. The system has been successfully tested on Windows XP, Windows 2000, MAC OS X and LINUX.

The system is extremely customizable and flexible and does not require any special expertise for its set up. However, as compared to other similar systems; this system is relatively less extensible and is best suited for small or medium sized websites. Help and other related assistance is always available by the active community and information can also be accessed by the website’s comprehensive documentation site.

phpWCMS facilitates simple management, compilation and administration in a seamless mode. The phpWCMS is an open source software and can freely redistributed and/or modified while adhering to the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. If the users have downloaded the code, they can extend the system themselves as well. The system offers some very powerful and fully usable features, although a few of them are still in the development stage. Following is an overview of its key featured offered:

• platform independent – tested on Linux, Windows 2000/XP/2003, MacOS X
• Install/setup GUI (creates database, configuration file)
• Backend translated into 13 languages (English, German, Danish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian)
• Backend users (admin/normal user), front-end users in preparation.
• Dynamic content creation features
• W3C conform front-end rendering.
• Unlimited page layouts – page layout wizard supports content rendering as table, div or custom.
• Unlimited templates (1 per site structure level) – template editor included with support for custom html head, onLoad Java Scripts and error messages, CSS file per template possible.
• Unlimited nested site structure levels.
• Alias for every structure level possible, hidden level
• Support for meta tag keyword and description and many other powerful replacement tags.
• Articles/pages are built by using content parts – article can have summary and/or redirection information.
• Multiple WYSIWYG editors included: HTMLarea 3 (IE5.5+, Mozilla 1.3+), Spaw (IE5.5+), FCKeditor (IE5.5+)
• Front-end CSS editor
• Structures, articles and content parts can be cut and paste and sorted
• Image resize functions included (GD1/2 and/or ImageMagick/GhostScript) – upload high end image and use it for every needed size (automatic thumbnail creation).
• File manager, back-end messages, back-end chat, user profiles and user can determine end date/time of specific articles.
• Plain text editor – HTML tags will be stripped
• HTML – like html text editor
• WYSIWYG HTML editor for IE5.5+ and/or Mozilla 1.3+
• Code – mono-spaced plain text editor
• Text (WYSIWYG editor) with 1 image (custom size, click/zoom).
• Images – creates list of images (custom sizes, allows 1-10 columns, click/zoom image, captions)
• Bullet list
• Link & email, link list, link article and article menu.
• Multimedia – support for multiple formats like MP3, QuickTime, Real-Media, Flash (Audio and Video – with auto-play, external/internal)
• File list
• E-card system for sending images via email
• E-mail form, news letter, search (Full text search), and sitemap and guest book.
• Automatic menu creation (like on the left, breadcrumb, css styled menus, related/new article menu)
• Basic text formatting; links to articles or external targets.
• PHP code/includes, vars/functions
• Images, random images, space holder images
• Custom search form, date/time, keywords in text.
• Real down/back/next/up (index) navigation
• JavaScript back, top, print link/button.

The basic requirements for running this system are:

A web server which supports PHP and MySQL.
If users wish to use automatic thumbnail creation and conversion into web graphics from many different graphic formats with ImageMagick and GhostScript; they must have these applications installed on the web server. phpwcms does not have an installer like many other applications. But the install process is fairly simple. Users need to make sure however that that they have the ImageMagick and GhostScript installed before they begin the installation process. Updating to newer is highly recommended and the process again is very easy. Before the update process, users need to have a backup of their web server files AND of their MySQL database as well just in case something goes wrong. It is important here to store the custom files like conf.inc.php, frontend.css, conf.template_default.inc.php and startup.html. It is very important to check if the database has been extended or changed in the release you want to install. This must be done manually. The patch files or core release should be downloaded to the local disk and then uncompressed.
Loads of implemental features of phpWCMS assists both publishers as well as web developers. The functionality of phpWCMS further can be expanded through the characteristic Module. The internal construction system is still in the rudimentary stage. The latest release of this is the phpWCMS 1.3.3 version, ready for download by users.
The personal settings of every backend user can be updated or adjusted under the profile settings and it is recommended that the password should be changed regularly, in minimum all 2 months, for security reasons. The other important setting in profiles is the language. Users here must select the most used language and save those settings. Once the page layout and templates have been successfully arranged; it is recommended to structure the website. phpwcms can handle unlimited nested structure levels; starting always at “index” (the phpwcms internal website home page). Most other Content management Systems out there can handle only a maximum of 2 levels. There is a difference between articles and structure level on one side and the web pages on the other side – rendering the content based on articles and structure results in dynamic web pages. Users can have as many articles per structure level if required.