Today, you can easily come across a wide range of open source content management systems like Magento, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and many more. These platforms are highly in demand these days and they are setting up websites in a convenient way with great amount of cost effectiveness and speed as well. Many designers are of the opinion that open sourcetechnologies are secure and robust and, today, when there is a need for developing a site, developers always select open sourceCMS as their first option. With the help of a good content management system, you can create, edit, organize, maintain and publish contents in a website and the entire process of developing a website also becomes a less complicated process. How tomaster the use of open source CMS? Take a look at these tips:
1) Create a Basic Understanding About Coding
Although open source website development provides an existing functionality that does not demand any serious PHP sourcecode customization, you should create a basic understanding about CSS, HTML, JavaScript, MySQL and PHP. Keeping the basics right will never hurt you and it can also help you during an emergency situation. Although various processes like editing and updating content become a lot easier with open source content management systems, familiarity with these languages can always be considered as highly beneficial.
2) Handle the Open Source Script with a Lot of Care
Many repetitive tasks can be associated with the creation of web projects today and the templates that CMS systems provide, can be utilized as a foundation to create other web projects with great amount of ease. But as developer, you should handle theopen source scripts with utmost care so that you can come to know what you really want and what is not needed. It definitely demands a fair amount of patience and practice and, like any other profession; you need to learn the basics right. When you learn the basics right, you can perform other activities quite easily. In other words, the rest of the ensuing processes become easy to understand and manipulate when you handle the script with proper care and attention.
3) Create Clear Cut Idea About Documentation
If you do not anything about documentation, you will not be able to master the use of open source CMS.
Once you become familiar with documentation, you can develop any required application with great ease. Open sourcecontent management systems always allow diverse customization features to accommodate the varying requirements of different clients and various processes like installing online discussion boards, portfolio websites, newsletter subscription forms and shopping carts will become hassle free with these platforms. Great amount of customizability can always be associated with leading service providers like Drupal and WordPress but you should have clear cut understanding about the documentation process if you really want to make use of the diverse customization features of leading platforms.
4) Go through and Study different CMS Web Development Solutions
If you want to make use of open source CMS to improve your web development skills, you will have to carefully select the platforms that you would like to start with. It is always advisable to begin with more than one CMS platform; in fact, you can make use of two or three platforms. It is mainly because some CMS web development solutions go in complete harmony with certain projects and you should learn to use the most appropriate platform for each project. You need to go through the documentation of all leading web development solutions in a detailed manner and such a method of approach will teach you which platform to be used for each and every project.
5) Identify the Project Requirements in an in Depth Manner
Apart from studying the CMS solutions, you should understand the exclusive requirements of a web project and such an approach will always help you understand clearly the functionalities that you need.
6) Learn how to Handle Multi-language Web Developments
Today, you can come across CMS solutions like Fork CMS that support multi-language website developments. When you develop sites that support multi-languages, you have to add different sub-domains that support those languages. Multi-language functionality varies with different CMS solutions and you should know how they differ if you really want to excel in the use of open source CMS.
7) Create Better Awareness About Alternate Open Source Script Management Solutions
Content management can be described as a widely spread out area and it includes different scripts of code. Many retailers and small businesses find great difficulty in fixing some inner pages when they get engaged in the process of content management and as a web developer, you should have the expertise to solve this problem. Certain amount of inherent difficulty can be associated with some mainstream CMS platforms and in order to address these issues, you should make yourself familiarize with alternate open source solutions. They function in the same way as popular content management systems work and these alternate platforms help developers launch social news community where users furnish their details to open accounts and submit content to the site as well.
8) Become an Active Member of Open Source Community
The speed at which developments are taking place can be described as extremely fast and as a web developer, you need to keep pace with these open source CMS developments. All leading platforms like Magento, WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have been coming up with innovative concepts to improve the user experience in the best possible manner and in order to keep you updated with these changes; you should become an active member of open source community. This community consists of a team of open source developers and enthusiasts and they share the new code and script developments with each other. Becoming an active member of this community and actively participating in discussions will certainly widen your horizon of knowledge.
Conclusion
It is a well-known fact that experimenting with new scripts and resources will certainly diversify your knowledge as a web developer. All these tips will help you become an open source content management expert and if you want to master the use ofopen source CMS; you should always be a fearless developer who is willing to get out of the comfort zone to embrace new ideas and concepts.