Customise a complex content management system

Analyse the different content management systems and their respective functionality

There are plenty of options when it comes to picking a content management systems for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it’s built in.

Here are 2 examples of most usable CMSs on the web.

1- WordPress

WordPress powers more than 33% of the web and it rises every day. Everything from simple websites to blogs to complex portal and enterprise websites and applications, are built with WordPress. WordPress combines simplicity for users and publishers with complexity for developers.

Here are some of the features of WordPress

  • Simplicity, makes it possible for you to get online and get publishing quickly. WordPress is built to make that happen
  • Flexibility, with WordPress, you can create any type of websites you want, personal blog or website, a photo blog, a business website, a professional website. You can make your website beautiful with themes and extend it with plugin, you can even build your own application.
  • Publishing tools, WordPress makes it easy for you to manage your contents, create drafts, schedule publication and look at your post revisions. Make your content public or private and secure posts and pages with a password.
  • Media Management, they say a picture says a thousand words, which is why it’s important for you to be able to quickly and easily upload images and media to WordPress.
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), WordPress is optimised for SEO right out of the box, there are plenty of SEO plugins to take care of that point.

WordPress Functionality:

The files of WordPress define many useful PHP functions. Some of the functions, known as Template tags, are defined especially for use in the WordPress Themes. There are also some functions related to actions and filters (the plugin API), which are used primarily for developing plugins. The rest are used to create the core WordPress functionality, many of the core WordPress functions are useful to Plugin and theme developers.

A functionality plugin is a way to separate what you might place in theme’ functions.php file, and put it in a plugin instead. It works the same way as a theme function.php file, but separate from the theme and so not affected by theme upgrades.

This plugin automates the process of creating a functionality plugin. Simply install and activate this plugin, and your very own functionality plugin will be created for you. You can edit your functionality plugin and add snippets to it using quick link in the admin menu.     

2- Drupal

Drupal is another CMS that has a very large, active community. Instead of focusing on blogging as a platform, Drupal is more of pure CMS. A plain installation comes with a ton of optional modules that can add lots of interesting features like forums, user blogs, OpenID, profile and more.

Here some of the features of Drupal

  • Taxonomy module, a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types. And it can find plenty of professional Drupal Themes Which Are ready to be customised and worked with, you can also grab Drupal plugins.
  • Active, Drupal has very active community powering it and has excellent support for plugins and other general questions

Drupal Functionality

The interactive Functions task allows workflow admins and developers to create custom UIs for their workflows. Interactive functions task types allow the workflow administrator to configure the task to show the end user a custom form when clicked on the task console.  

Markup languages and their associated standard

Markup languages are designed for the processing, definition and presentation of text. The languages specify code for formatting. Both the layout and style within a text file. The code used to specify the formatting called tags. Markup languages are building blocks used to create web pages or shapes and sizes. There are many different markup languages out there in the world. For web design and development, there are three specific markup languages which are XML (extensible Markup Language), XHTML (eXtended HyperText Markup Language), and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is an example of a widely known and used markyup language.

Server-side language

Server-side languages, as opposed to client-side languages, are programming languages that perform tasks on the server, before the page is sent to the browser for rendering. This site only provides limited information on sever-side languages. There are many of server-side languages, for example PHP, Python, Java and JavaScript 

Web security techniques

Website security refers to commands or applications that secure data or prevent the exploitation of websites. It is a system of measures and protocols that protect your site or web application from online threat.

There are several techniques to protect your website, here is some of the top steps to keep your website secure

  • Update, it is incredibly important to update your website as soon as a new plugin or CMS version is available
  • Change the Default CMS settings, CMS applications can be tricky from a security perspective for the end users, to protect your CMS, it’s recommended changing the default settings when installing your CMS of choice.
  • Backup, having website backups is crucial to recovering your website from major security incident.

The importance of web accessibility

Web accessibility is a way to make everyone including people with disability can access and use to the web.

The web and internet are important resources in many aspect of our life, we use the internet in research, education, employment and commerce, so it’s very important that the web is accessible to everyone, an accessible web can help people with disabilities participate more actively in society, also an accessible website is one of ways to do online business as well.