Template Version 2.0 Prepared for ElderSource ( June 2nd 2009 Version 1 (started June/2/2009) Satya Komatineni Small to Medium Corporate WebSite Tool Choices

Prepared for ElderSource ( Template Version 2.02 Goal 1.Provide an easy way to create and maintain ElderSource website 2.Allow the website to have community features such as 1.A set of users and their registration 2.Web logs 3.Profiles 4.Documents 5.Calenders 6.Participative forums 7.Pod casts, videos 3.Have a single tool or a very limited set of tools that can manage all of this 4.Allows master pages, skinning etc based on an underlying content management system

Prepared for ElderSource ( Template Version 2.03 Features to consider 1.Search and Indexing 2.Storage of static HTML and other documents 3.Child Portals 4.Registration and authentication 5.Support Communities 6.eCommerce capabilities 7.Photo Galleries 8.Web logs 9.Forums 10.Availability of third party modules to extend 11.Computer language/expertise needed to support the site 12.How matured is the tool 13.What is the future of the tool 14.How quickly is the tool maturing or tracking future 15.Ease of use 16.Ease of Administration 17.Cost

Prepared for ElderSource ( Template Version 2.04 Tools Considered 1.Drupal – A portal and a CMS that ran the Obama’s campaign site and other political sites. Lot of online documentation. One or two books are available. The maintenance is considered to be the steepest of all the tools considered. But considered the best for community like development. 2.Mambo – An easy to use site with similar capabilities as Drupal but less capable in its community features. Larger following than Drupal. Considered simpler than Drupal. PHP Based Microsoft Based 1.DotnetNuke – Provides capabilities similar to Mambo and Drupal. It is relatively younger but quickly maturing. Many books are available to work with it. Many plugins are available. Dotnet talent is easily available. However uses SQL Server as the database. The platform itself is free but one has to pay license or hosting fees for the SQLServer Google Based 1.GoogleSites – New kid on the block. Only a few months old. Probably the easiest all. But will take a year or two to get all the modules.

Prepared for ElderSource ( Template Version 2.05 Recommendation Drupal is probably the most powerful and most complete of the lot. But the other tools can do most of the work with different strengths. For the capabilities and requirements of smaller corporation one could probably go with Mambo as it supports various modules and also a basic sense of community. However the strength/trouble with both is that they are based on PHP. Although the maintainers does not need Perl/PHP much of the time, it does help to write extensions when needed. A small to main stream organization might be served well with more main stream technology such as Microsoft Dotnet. In that context I think DotnetNuke is a better fit. It is rapidly expanding to close the gap with Mambo and Drupal. The skill sets needed to work with DotnetNuke are all microsoft based and readily available in the market place. For corporations that have already invested in Microsoft I think DotnetNuke is a better choice.

Prepared for ElderSource ( Template Version 2.06 End