FAQ

General Web

General web questions that may not be specific to Zikula

Question

• What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
• What does SVN mean?
• What is open source?

Answer

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

Back in the early days of the world wide web, "webmasters" were forced to create each and every page of a web site. If the look and feel of the web site was to be changed, they would have to change each and every page.

The next generation of web sites utilized Content Management Systems (CMS) which do exactly what the name implies, they manage your web site content. Taking that one step further, the design (look and feel) and the content are completely independent, allowing for easy site wide changes to the look of the site.

CMSs have several features that have opened the doors for the creation of web sites by non-technical people. Such features include the ability to change the look and feel (theme) of a web site by changing a couple pages that control the theme for the entire site. Pre-made themes are also available that can be used "out of the box" or used as a starting point for a custom theme. Online editing allows for creating new content or editing existing content without any additional software. This also means that a web site utilizing a CMS can be managed from just about any computer with an internet connection and a person with the correct credentials to log in as an administrator.

What does SVN mean?

SVN is short for "Subversion" which is a tool used by software developers to control and manage their software projects. In a nutshell, it allows for tracking changes and the submission of bug reports and/or feature requests. On occasion you'll hear a developer refer you to the SVN version, which is useless advise to most people.

You can read the Wikipedia article for more information.

What is open source?

Zikula is Open Source software released under the GNU General Public License.