A Firms Decision Between Different Content Mangement

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

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Research design

Research Question

Defining the research question is one of the most vital steps in every research as stated by Yin (2003, p. 7). The use of research question is to define the whole process, guide the argument and provoke the interest of the viewer. In this thesis, the three main research questions are:

Why does company implement CMS?

What are the factors that affect the decision of which software to be used?

Why does company choose to use Joomla/CMSmadeSimple?

Research Purpose

There are three main categories for research purpose which are explanatory, descriptive and exploratory. In this thesis, the research purpose are a mixture of the three mentioned above. On one hand, this enables the author to describe the phenomenon and explain why it happens; on the other hand, the author can also explore the factors that affect and influence that phenomenon. This thesis revolves around the decision of a firm on which software to be used for CMS. It focuses on not only describing the software selecting process, but also giving the reasons why a firm choose to use certain software, and explore the factors that influence the decision.

Research Method

There are two main research methods that are used up to date. On one side, The Quantitative research concerns with testing hypotheses, considers cause and effect, and calculates the size of a phenomenon of interest (Johnson & Christensen, 2008). The final result of a research is usually in the form of statistical report including both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive method concludes and visualizes data in an informative way while inferential method generalizes about a population based on a sample.

On the other side, the aim of qualitative method is about understanding and interpreting the process that happens beneath a certain event and evaluate the people’s perception involved in the event. It involves people’s life histories, everyday behavior, words, and images. Personal feelings and experienced are also analyzed. (Silverman, 2000). Because of that, the methods such as interview with open-ended questions, observation and document review are used.

This thesis aim, once again, is to research the decision of firm on which software to be used for CMS; therefore, qualitative approach is the suitable method that can be applied to this thesis. As the qualitative approach used in this thesis explores the phenomena, semi-structured interview was done in order to provide a more complete picture.

Research Strategy

Robson (2002, p. 178) defines case study as "a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real life context using multiple sources of evidence". The central trend of every types of case study is that it tries to explore a decision or set of decisions: why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result (Yin, 2003). For that matter, case study is adopted as main strategy in this thesis.

Research Approach

The concept of CMS and information on Joomla and CMSmadeSimple was studied first in order to get a basic knowledge about the software. Then, relevant literature on the selection of software was studied in order to constructs a framework for the selection phase, including the steps and general factors that affect the process. The knowledge that gained from literature research helps in creating the model for the selection phase. Then, the question for the interview was designed based on that model. After that, coding method was used to categorize information extracted from the interviews. And finally, the information was analyzed base on the three main questions to deduce the conclusion.

Data Collection

In order to research the problem, semi-structured interview with open-ended questions is selected to explore the participants’ experience about the software selection phase in their company. These interviews help me to find out the process itself and also the influencing factors.

The model in literature review concerning the typical selection phase of software was the foundation to develop the semi-structured interview. The questions were open-ended in order to encourage the participants to define and describe the situation or event that occurred, as well as reveal their attitudes (Yin, 2003) (Silverman, 2000).

The participants were selected in a manner that they have already had experienced in the field and have made a multiple of website using CMS. They are also part of the IT team that is responsible for the adoption of the software. The interviews were conducted through chat messenger, and the questions were sent beforehand for preparation.

Data Analysis

The data was analyzed using the coding analysis method. The coding process is to generate categories that contain pointers to the actual data. The process starts by using descriptive coding where phases, words, and sentences from interview transcripts are labeled using relevant words or phase. (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

The interviews were conducted and transcribed in Vietnamese, then analyzed in English. The contents which were significant were highlighted from the text. Those significant findings were then categorized and listed to discover the reasons for choosing certain software (in this case Joomla or CMSmadeSimple), the selection process and the factors that influenced the decisions.

Reliability and Validity

Reliability is the extent to which the research findings are consistent over time, which mean that data collection techniques or analysis will produce the same results on different trial. Validity concerns the degree of which the study accurately hit "the bull’s eye" of the research object or on the other hand the research must truly measures that which it was intended to measure. (Yin, 2003) (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009, p. 157). The reliability and validity of this thesis stay at:

Two IT companies, which has already implement the CMS for their website using either Joomla or CMSmadeSimple

The interviewees were selected in a manner that they have already had some experience in the field and have made a multiple of website using CMS. They are also part of the IT team that is responsible for the adoption of the software. Thus, they will provide the needed information for the conducting research.

Content management system

Introduction

Nowadays, as the use of internet become more and more of a significant role in everyday life, information is much easier to spread out to other people. We don’t need to use verbal communication or the use of letters to transfer what we want to announce anymore. For that reason, everyone wants to make the best out of this thing called internet, and the website is the representative of it.

But, not everyone can be an IT specialists, people have their own things to master at. For example, in this case, you have to know HTML, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, etc. for creating, putting up and updating a website. Such tasks are not easy to be done and will require a considerable amount of time. When you consider a businessman, he won’t be able to do such thing when has his hand on his own professional stuff.

Still, organizations want to publish and update contents to the web without the need to know about any software than the web browser. Also, individuals want to share ideas, web logs, list of upcoming events and appointments, and their thoughts without bordering with any technical details (Simpson, 2005). The best solution to satisfy those needs of organization and individuals is Content Management System. So, what is CMS?

"A Content Management System (CMS) can be defined as a database of information and a way to change and display that information, without spending a lot of time dealing with the technical details of presentation." (Simpson, 2005)

A Content Management System supports anyone without the knowledge of HTML, PHP, JavaScript and MySQL the ability to manage, update, upload and delete contents from an internet site without the help or advice of a web developer. (Robertson, 2003)

With the help of a CMS, after a web site was made by a web developer, it is possible for any member of the organization to perform update with ease. This will ensure the work flow of the company, prevent interruption and of course save time and money. For example, let’s take company A with the use of CMS and company B with the traditional way of making website. After a while in operation, both company A and B decided to make a website of their own. They each hired a web developer to develop the website. After some time, the web developers decided to quit the company for a better one. Company A and B still run the website. For company A, instead of hiring a new web developer, can just have any member of the company with the permission to continue updating the information on to the website thanks to the help of CMS. On the other hand, company B can’t do anything since none of the employers have the knowledge of managing a website and thus need to hire a new web developer; therefore, the operation of the company will suffer in the meantime. This example emphasize the usefulness of CMS and also point out the trend of company nowadays when developing a new website.

Definition

A Content Management System is software that enhances the initiation or foundation, formation, manipulation, and elimination of information in the form of images, documents, scripts, and plain text. (Mercer, 2010)

A CMS consists of two elements: the content management application (CMA) and the content delivery application (CDA). The first one CMA element enables the content manager or author, who may not know HTML, to manage, modify, and remove content from a Web site without the help of a Web expertise. The CDA element uses and compiles that information to update the Web site. (Rouse, 2011)

CMS offers organizations and individuals the ability to develop and organize enterprise data for all of the demands regarding the internet such as Internet portals, e-business applications, intranets and extranets. (Durham, 2004)

Bernard (2010) defines CMS based on two definitions. The first one: "CMS is an application/software that provides capabilities for multiple user with different permission levels to manage (all or a section of) content, data or information of a website project, or internet / intranet application." The second one: "CMS is a web application that provides capabilities for multiple users with different permission levels to manage the content of a webpage without the need to have HTML knowledge."

Bradford Lee (2006, p. 5) describes CMS as a way of managing large numbers of web-based information that are more than coding all of the information into each page in HTML by hand.

Throughout the years since the first Content Management System was announced at the end of 1990s, many authors, individuals and organizations has been trying to define CMS. These definitions represent the opinions and experiences of individuals and organizations from using CMS.

To sum it up, a general definition of CMS is that it is an application/software that is used to manage the content of a website. The managing process is done through a multiple of functionalities and in a manner that provide the user an ease of use. It doesn’t require much technical knowledge and enable any organizations or individuals to exploit the potential of website.

Classification of CMS

Nowadays there are a large number of CMS that are in used. In total, it is up to more than 160 CMS that runs on different kinds of platforms ranging from Java, ASP.NET, Perl, and PHP and so on (Wikipedia, List of Content Management System). These CMS can be categorized based on two different criteria which are either Functionality or License.

By Functionality

Classification by functionality identifies what is the goal of each category of CMS is trying to achieve and which sector and platform is being used. There are three categories of CMS based on functionality.

Web CMS

Web CMS (WCMS) is one of the most popular types of CMS that involves the use of Markup languages for publishing, creating, storing and maintaining contents of a website. WCMS allows clients to take control over content, files, documents, and web hosting plans which are HTML-based depend on the system. (Roebuck, 2011)

Most of the people assume that there is only one type of WCMS, but in fact, there are three:

Offline processing systems: systems that process the content before it goes live

Online processing systems: systems that are based on user-generated content which includes for example, wikis, blog, forum, etc.

Hybrid systems: a combination of online and offline systems

(CMS.co.uk, Web CMS)

The main advantage of WCMS is that it is mainly designed for novice or non-technical users. This is ideal software for business or large organization where there is a large amount of need for working with website among the employees. This frees up the technical staffs for other activities and is more cost-effective for business. (CMS.co.uk, Web CMS)

E.g. Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, CMSmadeSimple, etc.

Enterprise CMS

Enterprise CMS (ECMS) is used by organizations for managing, organizing and sharing their large contents. These contents could be images, text, files etc. (Rockley, Kostur, & Manning, 2003)

They are able to handle large amount of content which are directly related to the company, this information consists of the procedures and hierarchy of that company. ECMS uses a variety of tools; this not only includes WCMS but also includes media manager and content organization. (CMS.co.uk, Enterprise CMS)

The aim of the system is to enable the employees to access the company information in a quick manner instead of making them searching through multiple software applications; hence, simplifying business processes which lead to a save of time and money. A factor that is a plus to this kind of CMS is in its ability to store information until it is no longer necessary or out of date. (CMS.co.uk, Enterprise CMS)

E.g. IBM Lotus, Alfresco, SharePoint, RedDot etc.

Mobile CMS

With the recent sudden growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and PDA’s in the recent year, there is no surprise that a CMS that is especially made for mobile appears. (CMS.co.uk, Mobile CMS)

The original goal was to target the business to consumer (B2C) market with focus on the omnipresence of the mobile phone. The massive demands for these mobile devices and the raise of all types of users led to the rapid development of mobile system to manage content such as ringtones, text messaging, news, games, etc. Later on, this has expanded into new areas such as business to employee (B2E) and business to business (B2B). (CMS.co.uk, Mobile CMS)

There are many type of Mobile CMS (MCMS), ranging from small one through larger system which are capable of multiple information delivery. Some also exist as a feature or add-ons as part of a larger MCMS. The advantages of this CMS are ease of use, readability and navigation according to the small size of the screens of mobile devices. (CMS.co.uk, Mobile CMS)

E.g. Wap-2-go, Mofuse, Synapsy, etc.

Component CMS

Component CMS (CCMS) focus on the creation of document from component parts. This includes graphics, links, a single word or even a complete paragraph of text. These components can be later reused within another document or across multiple documents. This guarantee that content is consistent across the entire document set. Each item of contents has its own life cycle which means that it can be managed individually or as part of a larger set of content. (VasontSystem)

The main advantage of CCMS is that it can re-use the content in multiple documents. Thus, remove the need of endless copy/paste and improve the quality of the document. It can also help to keep a consistent content. Another good advantage is in its capability to use a component in a certain context and then re-use it in a different context. This is really helpful for companies who aim to expand into the international market and need to translate their content into a variety of languages. (CMS.co.uk, Component CMS)

A CCMS can be used as standalone or part of a larger structure such as WCMS or ECMS. (CMS.co.uk, Component CMS)

E.g. SDL Trisoft, IXIASOFT DITA CMS, Vasont, XDocs, DITA Exchange, etc.

By License

Classification by license identifies if the CMS in question is free of use or not. There are two categories of CMS based on license.

Commercial CMS

Commercial or proprietary CMS is a type of CMS that is owned by someone and you need the permission or license in order to use it. In most case, even with the license, the license holders may still be forbidden to duplicate the CMS or make alternations to the application unless a more expensive license, e.g. "developers" are purchased. (WomeninBusiness.about.com)

E.g. SiteCore, EpiServe, Ektron, Alterion, Amaxus, etc.

Open Source CMS

Open Source literarily means source code availability. Making source codes available means the public could contribute to a software completion thus making software open to community of developers who could share their knowledge and could also customize the software to suit their needs.

OSCMS means a CMS that has the criteria of an open source. That is, OSCMS is a CMS that has its source code available for use or alternation by users or other developer community, as they like.

E.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, Plone, CMSmadeSimple, etc.

Joomla

Introduction

Joomla is an award-winning content management system with a powerful extension system used for developing different application on the web (Rahmel, 2009). The name Joomla comes from a Swahili word ‘jumla’ which means "as a whole" or "altogether". When an extension was installed in Joomla, it blends in with the rest of the site; all the extensions truly appear "as a whole, altogether" (LeBlanc, 2007).

Joomla was the result of a team working on Mambo software on August, 2005 (Kennard, 2007). Mambo software is a product of Miro International Pvt. Ltd. Developers of Mambo felt that Miro International was violating some of the open source values and therefore decided to start their own open source development software called Joomla. The development team then also created a forum named OpenSourceMatters.org to share information with everyone interested in that matter. (Wikipedia, Joomla)

The official web page for Joomla where you can find more information and download for usage is www.joomla.org. Joomla, as mention above in the classification of CMS, is a WCMS, which mean it is used to build small as well as large web applications; it offers a wide range of functionalities and extensions. Joomla has been adopted internationally by web developers for building corporate web sites, corporate intranets and extranets, news publishing, ecommerce, and NGO web sites (Rahmel, 2009).

At the moment, Joomla offers two version of its software: the first one is version 2.5.x which is recommended for most users and will be supported till 2014; the second one is version 3.0.x which is for experienced users and developers, it has more cutting edge features (Joomla). In mid-2007, the numbers of downloads of the Joomla system had surpassed 2.5 million (Rahmel D. , 2007). And in the early record as of March 2012, Joomla has been downloaded over 30 million times. Over 10,000 free as well as commercial extensions are available for download. It is estimated to be the second most used CMS on the internet after WordPress. (Wikipedia, Joomla)

Joomla Content Management System is licensed under an Open Source Software license, the General Public License (GNU). What this mean is that, you can build a CMS website for an organization with Joomla without worrying about liscese fee. Since Joomla is free, you get access to its source code and you can make any changes as much as you want. Furthermore, you can make contribution to the Joomla community and you could also get some help when needed.

PHP, SQL, MySQL, HTML, and CSS are the programming languages behind Joomla. It also includes JAVASCRIPT language for extension. It is cross- platform software which means it can run on different platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Technical Requirements

It is important to get to know the technologies that are involved in Joomla, this will let us know what are the things needed before developing a Joomla site.

Since Joomla is cross-platform software, operating system is not to be considered when starting to build a site with Joomla. The technologies that need to be considered when getting started with Joomla are: Web server, Database and Language interpreter.

Figure: Joomla 2.5.x Technical Requirements (Joomla, Techincal Requirements)

As shown in the figure above, after operating system, web server is the next element to be considered. Basically, Joomla can work on every web server that support PHP language since Joomla is built based on PHP. The three web server that works with Joomla is Apache, Nginx and Microsoft IIS. The recommended one for Joomla at the moment is Apache since it is now the most popular and has the most support from the community.

The next technology that is needed for getting started with Joomla is the database. MySQL is the only choice for Joomla 2.5.x version. MySQL is a popular open source database engine that works with all platforms, though each platform has its unique installation guide.

The last technology is PHP interpreter. PHP is the language of Joomla; it has Object Oriented Design (OOD) framework. It is used with many open source software on the web. The two CMS that are used in this thesis are both PHP based CMS.

Figure: Joomla 3.x Technical Requirements (Joomla, Techincal Requirements)

The technical requirements for Joomla version 3.x are basically the same for language interpreter, web server and operating system; the only different is the version.

But on top of that, Joomla 3.x offers a wider range of the use of database. Not only MySQL but also MSSQL and PostgreSQL are possible choices for this version. Despite that, MySQL is still a prefer choice for users.

CMSmadeSimple

Introduction

Technical Requirements

Comparisons

Analysis

Selecting Process

Cases Overview

Cases Analysis

Conclusions

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