This is a comparison of blog, wiki, and other web publishing tools that we might offer to users. ISPs such as Dreamhost and Go Daddy offer these to customers through a web control panel.
TYPICAL and TARGET USERS
* the "server under the desk" folks - users who want something a little more complex than static pages, but less than a full-blown hosted web site
* more business than personal/recreational -- oriented more toward departments than students or organizations at this stage
* civilians rather than hard-core geeks; people who are good at THEIR disciplines, not ours
WHAT'S OUT THERE
Short answer - hundreds of packages. For easy comparison, look at cmsmatrix.org\, which provides a side-by-side comparison of products against a checklist of attributes like functionality, system requirements, security, etc.
Many have repositories of user-contributed "themes" and skins so users can create a slick look and feel.
ZPanel is the open-source version of CPanel, the "gold standard" web control panels that ISPs provide to users to install and manage these products.
DIFFERENTIATORS and QUESTIONS
Most products include the tools that users have come to expect, like blogs and web publishing, so we have to refine the criteria.
Other considerations are:
* authentication - almost none of the free tools support Kerberos. Many support "pluggable authentication" and have LDAP plugins.
* ease of use - they all claim to be easy; test-drives will show more
* well-behaved from an administrator point of view - ( need specific questions )
* secure - ( need specific questions, test drives )
CHALLENGES
* authentication and user management - can we avoid each site admin having to add and manage users?
* ease of use - let a novice or uninterested user publish quickly. Is it possible to configure a vanilla default that will satisfy 80% of users, and allow the other 20% to go beyond vanilla as they're moved to?
TEST DRIVES
First goal is to do a proof of concept with one product. I'm installing the most popular packages that ISPs offer on Cobwebs .
These include:
joomla
drupal
geeklog
activecollab - a collaboration package