Continuing from my earlier post How-To Kick Start your own website …
Once you get the domain and decided where you going to host, Its time to get your hands dirty with all the softwares you want to install for your website. It could be as simple as WordPress or a combination of softwares like a CMS+Photogallery.
Most of the hosting companies have either Fantastico or their own 1click software packages which makes life super simple for novice users to install bunch of software’s at a click on a button. Incase you don’t have that option with your hosting company and want to install open source software just download it from the respective site, upload it to your server and install (mite not be as easy at times 🙂 )
A quick low down on all free opensource software available on the net to get kickstarted with your website. [All these softwares will work on a Linux Server]
Content Management System
When you have a lot of content+need for polls+forums+photo galleries all in one you go for a CMS.
Blogs
When you want to express your thoughts as simple posts. But the blogging engines have become very powerful and have lot of features which a CMS has like polls+photo galleries+events+…
Photo Galleries
If you need to show case your portfolio or just want to upload your wedding album on your own domain… Yes there are free services like flickr+picassa available where you can upload. But having your own Photo Gallery installed will give you more freedom to customise it what you want.
Ad Server
If you have a website which is popular enough for people to come to you to display their banners you would need an Ad server which will take care of serving the Ad + track the number of clicks/views, allow you to schedule the ads and many other things…
Forums
Forums are open discussion boards where related topics are categorised. People can engage in discussion by posting messages on relevant topics and replying to messages already posted.
Digg Clones
They are content management systems in a unique way that encourages users to participate and control the content on the site.
Social Network
So you want to start your own orkut or facebook you can do so in a couple of hours using one of the freely available software…
Shopping Cart
If you have some goods to sell and need a quick online shopping cart. Most of the shopping cart come with ready to use modules which are plugged in to some of the popular Payment Gateways (Paypal)
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions… Simple management tool to maintain FAQ’s for a particular website
Polls and Surveys
Usefull when you need to conduct surveys/polls.
Advanced Poll
SurveyMonkey
PHPSurveyor
Mailing List
If you want to send the same mail to 100000 of people at the same time and on a regular basis, use a mailing list program where you can templatise your mail and have a single repository for emails
Guestbook
No one really uses them any more… I am wondering why i have it here 🙂
Wiki
A wiki is a type of website that allows the visitors to add, remove, and sometimes edit the available content
Project Management
Now if you have a team working on a project and you want to keep a tab on whose doing what and how much time its taking go for one of the PM tools… There are some online services also available which do the same task…
Other Scripts
- Moodle is a course management system designed to help educators create quality online courses
- Run your own Classified ads website!
- Host your own auctions site!
You have Google Analytics, SiteMeter to monitor your traffic. They will tell you how many people visited the website, from where, how much time they spent and so on.
You can use Google Adsense, AdBrite which will provide you with banners which can earn you some revenue.
Each of the software mentioned above have an Admin interface to control the content flowing to the website. Also some of these software’s have tons of plugins most of them are free and can add a lot of value to the host software.
As you can see there is a hell lot one can do using these free Open Source Softwares…
If there is some Open Source Software you are using and think it will be useful to be listed here do comment about it or drop me a line.
Cheers!
14 responses so far ↓
1 Rajat Goyal // Oct 13, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I would also recommend the following:
Wiki: MediaWiki
Social Networking: elgg
Blogging: Movable Type
2 How-To Kick Start your own website - Life’s short Live it up! // Oct 13, 2008 at 4:37 pm
[…] Click here for all the free Open Source Software for your website. […]
3 Gaurav // Oct 13, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Kunal – Some of the links are messed up.
Here are my favorites.
Content Management System – WordPress (Yes, you can use it as a CMS, just need to set it up right and have right theme.) I like Uzanto’s implementation of WP as CMS very much.
Blogs – Again WordPress.
Photo Galleries – I have used Coppermine and it works well.
Ad Server – OpenX is a good option for hosted Ad server, but it requires a lot of resources. Running it on a shared hosting will make the ad serving slow and thus the pages displaying the ads slow. Google Ad Manager is another free (hosted by Goog) alternate. It does not have the best UX at this time. I got onto it during the private beta and have seen a lot of changes being added with each release.
Forums – vBulletin is not free/Open Source, but is a great piece of software to run forums.
Has anyone used BBPress (an Automattic product)? I have heard some good things about it, but never used it.
Shopping Cart – Magento is another new player in the game. It requires latest version of PHP (5.2.*) and at least 128 MB of RAM (for Pear). It is developed on Zend Frameowork. I personally like their code structure.
Gaurav
4 Reeteshinator // Oct 14, 2008 at 1:05 am
Nice list! I have seen fantastico recently, and seems to be a very loaded tool! really good.
I dont get what an “Ad server” is.. do you put ads of other people in that and it randomly changes them ? Is it for making something like Adsense ?
And is that AdBrite thing also free like Adsense? Is it good for Indian Residents?
5 Reeteshinator // Oct 14, 2008 at 2:22 am
Ah, thats great! Thanx for the fast update! So those Ad servers are for those non per-click based ads? cool. got it.
Didn’t understand why those photo Gallery things were listed until you mentioned “portfolios” that should help a lot of my friends!
Thanks for sharing!
6 Sathya // Oct 14, 2008 at 9:48 am
Nice compilation. Just to add, under forums, MyBB should be included, its a great piece of s/w, got most of the features which phpBB (minus mods, of course) misses out on such as AJAX QuickReplies etc.
@Reetesh Adbrite is similar to Adsense, doesnt have the same “punch” as Adsense, and their pop-up ads can be annoying
7 James // Oct 14, 2008 at 11:03 am
do you know your blog is listed on this blackhat site? blackhatbootcamp.net/listofwordpressblogs/
8 Shopping Cart Upload // Oct 23, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Good site I \”Stumbledupon\” it today and gave it a stumble for you.. looking forward to seeing what else you have..later
9 chomchom.info // Nov 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm
that is very nice
10 Dhawal // Nov 13, 2008 at 5:27 pm
This is cool, all the consolidated information, I have forwarded the link to 4 people. Kudos to Kunal.
11 Interview with Kunal Sheth | BlogAdda Blog // Apr 3, 2009 at 10:32 am
[…] Its a mixed bunch. I like to write about technology, simple How-To’s, My experience with something I have been trying to do and had a tough time […]
12 Kanika // Apr 8, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Thanks..for a new-bee blogger this article serves a purpose of a mentor and a guide…
13 tree care professional // Dec 30, 2016 at 11:48 am
Oh my goodness! Amazing article dude! Thanks, However I am going through issues with
your RSS. I don?t understand the reason why I cannot subscribe to it.
Is there anybody having similar RSS problems? Anybody who knows
the solution will you kindly respond? Thanks!!
14 Anonymous // Apr 29, 2020 at 1:24 am
Thanks for finally talking about >Free Open Source Software for your website
– Life_s short Live it up! <Loved it!
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