Whether you are a novice, who knows very little about website development, an already experienced professional or a business owner focused on business growth, you can become part of the virtual world once you’ve set yourself a challenge to build a website. There is only one big question – how?
For a start, you need to work with a good website building platform, an appropriate content management system (CMS) to create a fantastic website and you could engage a software development and outsourcing company to get to the finish line faster, cost-effectively and tap specialists for expertise.
In this article we’ll try to determine whether TYPO3 is a good bet to handle your web ambitions, its pros, scope and area of applicability.
TYPO3 positions itself as a content management system for the Enterprise. The development of this system was initiated by Kasper Skarhoej back in 1998. CMS is free under license GNU GPL, written in PHP using the DBMS MySQL. TYPO3 has become a brand name after the commercial success of the third version. The version has long as been updated to four, but number 3 in the name has since remained. TYPO3 makes reasonable demands on server hardware and software. It can run on virtual Linux (Unix) hosting with standard configuration and on Windows-based hosting.
Each CMS occupies its own marketing niche and serves its own unique purposes. For example, Drupal works best for sites where visitors are expected to actively participate in filling the site with content. In Joomla, an editor figures out faster how to format a text. WordPress, in its turn, is a good fit for creating small websites. Then, what is the fuss around TYPO3?
Among its benefits the following stand out:
- ability to use over 6000 extensions from TER (TYPO3 Extension Repository) – suppose you need new functionality, it suffices to install an extension, there is no need to use another CMS;
- ability to customize the entire template by using both TYPO3 extensions and different applications;
well thought-out architecture of admin interface, flexible user system (you can have as many administrator users and non-administrator users as you wish sparing yourself the unnecessary trouble. When there is malfunction, system failure or a very important page has been removed you see who is responsible); - flexible configuration of user rights ( users can be assigned to one group or many groups (‘Editors’ or ‘Reviewers’);
- ability to use a single installation for multiple independent sites and domains;
- possibility to create and manage multiple releases;
- you log in once and you have access to everything you need;
- instead of a flat list of pages you get a real page tree where you can reuse or group pages or parts of pages as you wish, rearrange them and TYPO3 automatically verifies that links still work;
- optimized content types for the best presentation and layout (tables, images, multimedia usage is possible with many add-on features and tuning possibilities);
- scalabilty ( it is effective with low-traffic (about 70 visitors a day) as well as high-traffic (20000 visitors an hour) websites;
- implemented effective security measures (this system meets high-security standards, it is not coupled with security gaps).
Otherwise great, it has its, some say, minor shortcomings like the complex system of options and settings, slow rendering of large pages. TypoScript, which, beyond doubt, falls into the category of this CMS peculiar characteristics, is somehow a double-edged sword. On the one hand, its settings can be changed without getting into PHP code of CMS or its extensions, what extremely facilitates the system upgrade. On the other hand, it takes time and effort to master its syntax and learn how to configure extensions. The complexity of an assignment depends upon the role. For example, for editors, it is almost as easy as learning WordPress. Competence gets more of an issue with administrators and programmers when it comes to writing a good TYPO3 module, installing it, etc. In case of TYPO3, the end justifies the means. Luckily, there are professional software development outsourcing and consulting companies who provide TYPO3 support.
Mindful of these peculiarities, we recommend using this open source CMS, for it is really powerful to properly manage websites, opening wide possibilities (structuring all content, pages, creating a customized template) and saving efforts. No wonder that TYPO3 CMS is used by over 30,000 websites whose owners are both large corporations, small businesses, and famous online editions. Consider just few brand names: CISCO, UNICEF, Air France-KML, The Economist, Total, Epson, BAYER, Ford, UNESCO, Audi, Philips, Handicap International, Volkswagen, New York Times, Lufthansa, Ford, Samsung and more.
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