Content management system

The following article contains information on various content management systems (CMS).

Moodle

From Moodle.org: Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a University with 200,000 students.

Key Notes:

Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support a SQL type database (for example MySQL). 
It can be run on Windows and Mac operating systems and many flavors of linux (for example  Red Hat or Debian GNU).
Moodle's document pages are done using MediaWiki.
Supports numerous modules both developed by Moodle and third-parties.
The Modules and Plugins Database for Moodle can be found here: [1] 

Overview

Information taken from: [2]

• Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical reflection, etc)
• Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
• Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface
• Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only one database (and can share it).
• Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for initial table definition)
• Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests.
• Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands of courses
• Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor
  

  Sample Picture of Moodle Interface

Site Management

• Site is managed by an administrator user
• Site is defined during setup. Defaults can be edited during setup or globally accepted
• Site can be modified by a robust Site administration block.
• Plug-in "themes" allow the administrator to customize the site colors, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs
• Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations
• Plug-in language packs allow full localization to any language. These can be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for over 70 languages.
• The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your needs

User Management

• Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security
• Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.
• Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses are verified by confirmation.
• LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to use.
• IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.
• Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected from display if required.
• Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated to that timezone (e.g. posting dates, assignment due dates etc)
• Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

Authentication Features

More information pertaining to authentication can be found here: [3]

• Manual accounts
• No login
• Email-based self-registration
• CAS server (SSO)
• External database
• FirstClass server
• IMAP server
• LDAP server
• Moodle Network authentication
• NNTP server
• No authentication
• PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules)
• POP3 server
• RADIUS server
• Shibboleth
• NTLM/Integrated Authentication (3rd party plugin)

Moodle Themes

Infomation taken from: [4]

• Themes may be configured at site level, course level and/or user level.
• Each page is individually-addressable via CSS, allowing you to pinpoint exact items.
• Our CSS class naming system uses simple English, is consistent and easily understood.
• New modules can tell Moodle what styles they need and automatically include these in the stylesheet.
• Themes can be based on the standard theme, which is very plain but functional. You simply override styles you want to change by adding to the stylesheet in your own theme. This means that if you upgrade Moodle later and new styles are needed, your custom theme will still work without any changes, because the new classes will be defined in the standard theme.
• Themes can also be based on any other theme. This allows you to easily create families of themes, or variations on a theme. For example you might create a spectrum of pastel shades for use in different courses, but with the same basic layout and logos. You may also want to create a family of differently-coloured themes for accessibility purposes.

Drupal

From Drupal.org/about: Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including:

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

Key Notes:

Drupal has been successfully installed on the ENGR servers.

Features

Information taken from: [5]

• Collaborative Book - Our unique collaborative book feature lets you setup a "book" and then authorize other individuals to contribute content.
• Friendly URLs - Drupal uses Apache's mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.
• Modules - The Drupal community has contributed many modules which provide functionality that extend Drupal core.
• Online help - Like many Open Source projects, we can't say that our online help is perfect but have built a robust online help system built into the core help text. Available to you on your own site.
• Open source - The source code of Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 (GPL). Unlike proprietary blogging or content management systems, Drupal's feature set is fully available to extend or customize as needed.
• Personalization - A robust personalization environment is at the core of Drupal. Both the content and the presentation can be individualized based on user-defined preferences.
• Role based permission system - Drupal administrators don't have to tediously setup permissions for each user. Instead, they assign permissions to roles and then group like users into a role group.
• Searching - All content in Drupal is fully indexed and searchable at all times if you take advantage of the built in search module.

User management

User authentication - Users can register and authenticate locally or using an external authentication source like Jabber, Blogger, LiveJournal or another Drupal website. For use on an intranet, Drupal can integrate with an LDAP server.

Content management

• Polls - Drupal comes with a poll module which enables admins and/or users to create polls and show them on various pages.
• Templating - Drupal's theme system separates content from presentation allowing you to control the look and feel of your Drupal site. Templates are created from standard HTML and PHP coding meaning that you don't have to learn a proprietary templating language.
• Threaded comments - Drupal provides a powerful threaded comment model for enabling discussion on published content. Comments are hierarchical as in a newsgroup or forum.
• Version control - Drupal's version control system tracks the details of content updates including who changed it, what was changed, the date and time of changes made to your content and more. Version control features provide an option to keep a comment log and enables you to roll-back content to an earlier version.

Modules

• Content Management Systems
• Blogs
• Collaborative authoring environments
• Forums
• Peer-to-peer networking
• Newsletters
• Podcasting
• Picture galleries
• File uploads and downloads
• All of Drupal's add-on modules can be found here: [6]

Collaborative Book Info

A book is a set of pages tied together in sequence, perhaps with chapters, sections, subsections, and so on. You can use books for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), or whatever you'd like. Users who have permission can create a book and write, review, modify, or rearrange the pages. Many users can work together on a book. You can allow or disallow collaboration, to whatever extent you want. On the books administration page (administer >> content >> books), administrators can view a list of all the books on your site. For each book there's a link to an outline, from which to edit or delete pages or sections, change their titles, or change their weight (thus putting them in a different order). For more information on books, go to: [7]

Joomla!

Framework

From dev.joomla.org: Joomla! 1.5 is a three tiered system. The bottom tier is the framework level and consists of the libraries and plugins (formerly known as mambots). The second tier is the application level and consists of the JApplication class. Currently there are three applications that ship with Joomla: JInstallation, JAdministrator and JSite. The application acts as the main controller for the page. The third tier is the extension level. This level is where all component, module, and template logic is executed and rendered.[8]

Picture of Joomla! Framework

Applications

Information taken from: [9]

• Corporate websites or portals
• Online commerce
• Small business websites
• Non-profit and organizational websites
• Government applications
• Corporate intranets and extranets
• School and church websites
• Personal or family homepages
• Community-based portals
• Magazines and newspapers

Extensions

Information taken from: [10]

• Dynamic form builders
• Business or organizational directories
• Document management
• image and multimedia galleries
• E-commerce and shopping cart engines
• Forums and chat software
• Calendars
• Blogging software
• Directory services
• Email newsletters
• Data collection and reporting tools
• Banner advertising systems
• Subscription services
• All of Joomla!'s Extensions can be found here: [11]

Developers

Information taken from: [12]

• Integrated e-commerce systems
• Inventory control systems
• Data reporting tools
• Custom product catalogs
• Complex business directories
• Reservation systems
• Communication tools
• Application bridges

Joombla! has a framework API that can be found here: [13]

Elgg

From elgg's documentation site: Elgg is an open-source social networking platform. It offers blogging, networking, community, collecting of news using feeds aggregation and file sharing features. Everything can be shared among users with access controls and everything can be cataloged by tags as well.

Key Notes:

Elgg's Documentation site is done by using MediaWiki.
It can be setup to integrate with MediaWiki, Moodle, Drupal, and WebCT, as well as use plug-ins to provide a calendar and a wiki.

Features

• Blogging
• Social networking
• File repositories for individuals and communities
• Podcast support
• Full access controls
• Supports tagging
• User profiles
• Full RSS support
• RSS aggregator
• Create communities
• Collaborative community blogs
• Create 'friends' networks
• Import content
• Publish to blog
• Multilingual
• Branding/customisation
• OpenID support

Elgg: Features: - blogging - social networking - podcast - user profiles - rss support - create communities - collaborative community blogs - publish to blog Modules:

Skins: Yes

WordPress

Features:

               - Full standards compliance

       	- allows you to manage non-blog content easily

- password protected posts

Modules:
- podcasting
- plugin for different forum software (SMF, Vanilla, bbPress, phpBB, PunBB)

Skins: Yes

MediaWiki

Features:
- the wiki software Wikipedia is built off of
- easy for users to edit pages

Skins: Yes

PhpBB

Features:
- opensource bulletin board - Skins: Yes