OPEN SOURCE CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS OFFER WIDER RANGE OF FUNCTIONALITY FOR HORTON GROUP CLIENTS

Open source refers to software that it is distributed freely and additionally offers access to the product’s design - essentially opening the source code to collaboration and further ingenuity from outside developers. Horton has taken note of the growing popularity of this type of web development software and has embraced open source CMS as valuable resources for offering clients better marketing and advertising tools.

A community of developers working together to add more utility into a content management system leads to the creation of invaluable tools for businesses and organizations seeking to build a better online presence. On top of providing clients with a means to manage their own content Horton Group also gives clients access to website management tools that are constantly improving. Open source software allows websites the potential to always change and evolve along with a growing library of programming technology.

The majority of Horton Group websites are developed on Drupal, one of the most popular CMS platforms available. With one of the largest and most dedicated online development communities, a few of the websites built on Drupal include big brands like Twitter and Nike. Even the website for The Whitehouse - the executive branch of the United States government - is built on the Drupal platform. Horton Group also uses Wordpress as one of their main development platforms because of its simplicity and user friendly interface. Horton Group believes the employment of basic but innovative open source CMS helps clients keep content fresh and relevant - websites become less static and more interactive.

A recent article posted to business2community.com states that more businesses will increasingly begin to adopt open source content management software because of the multiple benefits it offers. However, Horton Group prefers the use of open source content management systems for more reasons than their widespread popularity. “Open source software is great because it allows us to offer a variety of options, but also promotes a strong knit development community that in the end will ultimately benefit the client,” notes Horton Group Lead Developer Matt Smith. “Mostopen source content management systems like Drupal are free, which allow us to pass bigger savings onto our customers. This gives us the capability to offer clients more diverse programming options at lower costs.”

Ultra Light Startups: Open Source Content Management Systems

"The cost of launching a tech venture is continually falling, due to a large number of interrelated technical, social, and financial factors." - The statement couldn't be more true, it's simply becoming easier and less expensive to build and launch a startup compared to 5 years ago, or even last year. It's part of the reason why there are more startups founded in undergraduate universities, business grad schools, and by young entrepreneurs who have small savings, if any, to seed their ideas. At the same time, some of these early stage companies create very viable and attractive investment opportunities for venture capitalists. Earlier this week, I spoke with Bijan Sabet, General Partner at Spark Capital who not only agrees that "students make for great investments", but also invests in those young entrepreneurs. He's led investments in Tumblr, which was started by David Karp when he was 19, and Twitter.

The notion that startups could be started with little startup capital spurred Graham Lawlor (currently studying for his masters at NYU), to found the Ultra Light Startups group. (I was fortunate to meet Graham a short while back at the Web 2.0 conference in New York City. We kept in touch because our common interests and that our two projects have a lot in common.) Graham describes Ultra Light Startups as "a group of entrepreneurs who explore these perpetually evolving factors and refine techniques to launch technology ventures - minimizing cost and time associated with testing ideas in the marketplace." I absolutely love the idea and have given thought to helping him start one in Boston, but I just haven't had time to give it as much attention as I would like.

The startup group meets once a month and hosts on average 30-50 tech entrepreneurs who come to actively share ideas, network, and participate in discussions that focus on a particular "ultra light startup" technique. Last month, they ran one on SEO and SEM. On December 4th, they'll have a panel and forum discussing open source content management systems, such as Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress, and how you can utilize them for your startup. Part of my job at Acquia is to discuss prospects' web initiatives and how Drupal can help them build their websites, whether its a large media site, social network, or application. I have talked to a large number of startups who are using Drupal not only because it saves them time and money, but because it is a very extensible and powerful open source platform. Open source strategies have proven to be critical underpinnings of some of todays most successful companies...Google leverages OS and many applications on the web are built off PHP, just look at Facebook.

What are the characteristics of an Ultra Light Startup?

* Low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget
* The use of outsourcing, offshoring and outsourcing marketplaces (e.g. Guru.com, Elance, oDesk)
* Use of off-the-shelf and open source software and platforms (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki) and their ecosystems
* Minimizing hardware costs and maximizing flexibility with cloud/network computing
* Leveraging infrastructure and communities provided by the diverse set of existing and social platforms and devices
* Viral/guerilla/social marketing
* Any other low-cost, high-flexibility techniques

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