TYPO3 CMS

Content Management System

TYPO3, cms, content, management, system, WEB9, web, internet

Choosing a Content Management System (CMS) can be a long and difficult process, especially since there are a large number of content management systems available.

In Europe alone, you have around 500 systems to choose from. Whether you are looking to manage content in a large corporation, university, non- profit organization or a small business, we can provide you with an enterprise- level solution that meets your needs. You no longer need to settle for an expensive proprietary CMS with very little features. Instead, we can offer you the best feature of all - freedom.

A CMS can only be successful if content editors and administrators are willing to use it. This makes usability a very important factor when choosing a system.

Unfortunately, most of the time you have to choose between a CMS that is easy to use or one that has the functionality you need. With TYPO3, you won't have to make that decision since the software already maintains a good balance between the two.

For administrators, TYPO3 offers a wizard for creating a site based on an HTML template or series of templates. You define where you want the dynamic content or menus to appear. You can further extend the templates through a well-documented scripting language called Typoscript. This provides you with the tools to access your data in a variety of ways. Not only is there a wizard for creating templates, but also there is a similar tool for creating your own extensions called the Extension Kickstarter.

For content editors, TYPO3 takes very little time to learn (from 30 minutes to a few hours) and there are many tools available to help. TYPO3 is a browser-based CMS that runs on most platforms (Windows, Mac or Linux) and is compatible with a variety of current browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, etc.). With few limits on what editors can use to edit the site, enterprises can easily integrate TYPO3 into their multi-platform environment.

There are two ways to edit in TYPO3; on the web page itself, "frontend" and through the software, "backend". Text is edited using familiar Office icons. You can cut and paste text and images from a program such as Word into the TYPO3 editing window. Images can be automatically resized. Content can be set to hide and unhide on certain dates. It can be restricted to certain users and groups.

TYPO3 is open source, available under the GPL license and free to download. With commercial systems, the cost of license fees can add up quickly as you add content editors, software extensions, servers and databases.

None of these fees apply to TYPO3. With the open source licensing model, you can minimize the amount of your initial investment, which increases your ROI (Return on Investment) over the same time period. Besides the financial gains of using open source, you will also have the freedom of choice. With similar commercial systems, you cannot alter the software, build additional functionality or even control your data because you are locked in a contract that prevents you from doing so. As the web changes, you won't be able to change with it. Instead, you will be at the mercy of the company that developed the software. With thousands of CMSes available today, it is not uncommon for these software companies to go out of business unexpectedly. You may end up with an expensive CMS that you can no longer even use and the cost of migrating your data to a new system could be astronomical.

Any content management system is a large investment in time and money. Once you move to a CMS, you will need to continue supporting it for years.

For this reason, you need to protect your investment from the start. As your business grows, you will want to know that your CMS can grow with it. For example, a retail business has been using TYPO3 to maintain a simple website. They recently decide to move into ecommerce and want to add a shop to their website. To solve this problem, they download a shop extension from the repository and install it. They realize they need to add a few fields to the product record and so they make an additional extension that modifies the shop extension. In this scenario, you can see how TYPO3 "grew" with this business. Since TYPO3 is open source and extremely modular, the business was able to adapt the software to fit its needs.

TYPO3 is property and under copyright of the TYPO3 Association.

Home | Top | Back | Mission | About us | Terms of use | Imprint