PostNuke and Content Management Systems

PostNuke is a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is essentially software that allows you to add and edit content existing on a website. Most CMS systems provide tools to manage content without knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or programming.

PostNuke has also been described as a "Community, Content, and Collaborative Management System," or C3MS. The additional Cs refer to the specific additional community-building tools PostNuke includes and the large community and user base PostNuke enjoys.

Why PostNuke is the Right Choice

PostNuke is an open source CMS. The obvious benefit of open source is cost; although some open source products do have useful support licensing, open source implementations are usually only a fraction of the cost of their fully commercial counterparts.

Some might point out that the real cost of open source is in the support, or lack thereof, for a given product. That is an especially positive feature of PostNuke, which has a huge online community with hundreds of thousands of site developers. The PostNuke website, which hosts the primary support forums, receives well over a million visitors each month.

Open source solutions are also often criticized as untested in the corporate commercial environment, but that is a myth. A growing trend among large businesses and organizations is to switch from proprietary applications to General Public License (GPL) and open source. Worldwide, governments are regularly announcing that they are evaluating open source solutions and in many cases performing a complete switch to open source products.

But even if you are sold on open source, why PostNuke specifically? First, PostNuke is well established with over three years of development history, longer than nearly every other active open source CMS.

Of all the open source Content Management Systems, PostNuke and PHP-Nuke are by far the most popular and established with the most sites, modules, and community support. PHP-Nuke is also released under the GPL but charges to download the latest version. PostNuke proponents generally agree that PostNuke aims for a higher level of code quality than PHP-Nuke, resulting in a more stable, secure, and modular program.

PostNuke's large centralized community ensures continual growth and support. Hundreds of third-party module developers exist, and this veritable army provides a development power large enough to challenge any commercial competitor. Perhaps due to the large community involvement, PostNuke has uniquely been focused on user needs and support among similar CMS projects.

The bottom line is that when you need a feature for your PostNuke site, odds are you will have a choice of multiple modules that already perform the task. And for entirely new features, explaining the benefit of your need in the support forums is likely to generate interest leading to new module development.

History and Development Forks

PostNuke was born as a development fork from PHP-Nuke (www.phpnuke.org) early in the summer of 2001. Developers had become increasingly frustrated with code inconsistencies and security issues plaguing PHP-Nuke at the time, but the often closed team structure of PHP-Nuke made it impossible to remedy the known problems. As a result, many of the active PHP-Nuke developers left that project to form PostNuke.

This forking of development groups is far from uncommon in the open source world. PHP-Nuke itself was a fork of Thatware (www.thatware.org), and subsequent forks of PostNuke, notably Envolution (www.envolution.com), Xaraya (www.xaraya.com), and MD-Pro (www.maxdev.com).

In September of 2004, PostNuke 0.75 was released as a major step toward version 1.0. It provides support for legacy modules written before 0.75, but also contains the new pnRender and Xanthia modules that enable developers of third-party modules and themes to convert their code over to the new cleaner and more modular PostNuke system before 0.8 is released. Version 0.75 is a turning point in PostNuke's development, designed to ensure smooth transition to this and all future versions.