Using Open-Source Web Apps for Commercial Sites

21/04/06

There are an increasing number of ready-made web applications to be found on the internet. By "Web Application" I mean something more than just a normal web site - I mean a site that has been programmed for a specific purpose to have extra functionality.

One example of a great web application that is freely available as open-source is Gallery.

Install Gallery on your website and you have a handy interface that allows you to display photos in customised galleries, with the site automatically creating thumbnails and displaying other information. You can upload your photos and theme the galleries through your browser simply by logging in with an admin username and password, so you don't need to install anything on your local machine.

Open-Source for easy updatability

The beauty of open-source is that if there is something you want to change that doesn't come as part of the standard package, you can "hack" the code to make it work the way you want. If you fix errors or make improvements that others might use you can even submit them to the source code so that others can benefit from your changes.

Even if you don't have the technical knowledge yourself, getting your web developer to take advantage of open-source web applications can drastically reduce your development time and cost.

For instance, let's take another great example of an open-source web application: WordPress. WordPress is very popular with bloggers worldwide, and part of the appeal is its claim to a "5 minute install" which even non-tech people can perform.

But WordPress isn't limited to blogging. The great look and easy-to-use interface means that many small businesses use it as a base for a company website that in house staff can update without needing a computer tech.

It's understandable: a fantastic website that would normally take a developer months to produce is available to you straight away. For free. And it's easily themed to match the look of your business marketing.

 

Open-Source web apps that we use:

Gallery

"Your photos on your website." Allows the user to upload photos, manipulate them and sort them into galleries and slideshows, all through a web interface. Themes and custom branding available.

 

WordPress

Blogging web application that is very easy to use and can allow small businesses to maintain a website themselves if they want to. I am impressed with the quality of WordPress, from the user interface and themes available to how well the back-end code is written.

 

PhpBB2

This is a bulletin-board system (also known as a "forum") which works brilliantly out-of-the-box but also allows for integration into an existing website. If you have a site that needs a forum, this is almost certainly the easiest way to get one.

 

Drupal

Drupal is a full-blown CMS (Content Management System) which can handle multiple users uploading and creating pages, stories, images, thumbnail galleries, podcasts etc. It has a long list of powerful features and plugins that mean it can support all sorts of websites, from a personal blog to a complex community portal. While it is very powerful we have found drupal can be difficult to set up, with some plugins "breaking" others.

 

Mambo

Another powerful CMS, Mambo is definitely prettier than the others we've seen once it's installed. Plugin support and customisation is a little trickier than drupal.

 

oscommerce

An Open-Source e-commerce application that can handle shopping carts, ordering, product display, pricing - basically everything that's standard in an e-commerce site. This is a very complete package that literally thousands of sites around the world are using.

 

phpESP

Stands for PHP Easy Survey Package, a package that handles online surveys. There are plenty of open-source survey packages available, but this one has a good feature list and works out-of-the-box. The default themes are pretty horrible, but if you've got a decent web tech it won't be too hard for them to modify it.

For these and many other Open-Source and commercial web applications, we can provide a pre-installed, branded or customised version already hosted on our web servers and ready to go. Contact us for more details, or see our websites page for examples.