You have a number of choices to make while creating a website. The most crucial is choosing the correct agency to partner with. Choosing the ideal CMS (content management system) for your project is another crucial choice you’ll need to make when creating a website. (Slight sales pitch, but I stand by that statement.) There are many solutions available to you, but the majority can be classified as either Open Source or Proprietary. What do “Proprietary” and “Open Source” mean, exactly? It all boils down to ownership, control, and access to the source code. Public access to open source software like WordPress, Drupal, and Laravel is free. This implies that a developer may download, read, and edit the code. Wix and SquareSpare are examples of proprietary software that is owned, managed, and maintained by the business or person who developed it. In other words, you can use them to develop a website, but you are unable to change the underlying code.
We at CommonPlaces urge all of our clients to utilise the top business software available. When it counts, we will always advise working on an open source platform for any project and prefer to do so.
Cost Free: Depending on your use and feature needs, most proprietary solutions have several levels of access and charge a monthly licencing fee to use their systems. This is not the case with open source, where the code is made freely usable by everyone and is consequently protected by the General Public Licenses. While the code itself is free, there will always be a fair fee associated with labour, hosting, and the sporadic third party expense, therefore this does not imply that a new website will be FREE. Although there are countless free plugins and modules accessible, there are also some “premium” choices that can call for a one-time or ongoing fee in order to gain access. Even with these expenses, the overall cost of using open source software is much lower than that of using proprietary software.
Access to Resources:
For any organization, having the option to hire whomever it wants as employees is a major plus.
You are given that freedom via open source. Open Source has a large community.
Given the size of the community, you’ll discover that there are many service providers for the Open Source software that powers your website. This indicates that services are offered effortlessly amongst agencies. So, if you don’t like the vendor you choose, look for another one who more closely fits your demands, goals, and budget. When weighing your alternatives, a word of advice: “Choose wisely.”
Although the community is amazing and full of talented people, not everyone adheres to standard practises. Cutting shortcuts now could end up costing a lot later. We can verify that some of the websites we inherited were excellent, others were passable, and several were dumpster fires that were rapidly spreading.
Community Assistance: A HUGE community that is working on new and core features is available to help with inquiries and difficulties. Around open source systems, communities grow. By developing new features and making code changes, every community is continuously attempting to pinpoint needs and find solutions. Over a million people are members of Drupal.org alone, and they regularly update its core functions and add to its collection of more than 49,000 free modules. Is WordPress used to build your website? You can choose from over 59,000 free plugins as well as innumerable themes and layouts made by that community.
Application Ownership: Because open Source Solutions are not held by a particular business, YOU own your website and its contents and may take them wherever you want. The GNU General Public License governs most Open Source software solutions, making them open to the general public. This ensures that anyone can access, alter, and distribute the code as their “own” will. It is also widely transferable because it was created by a community rather than by a single person or business. Unlike proprietary software, which is often owned and licenced by a particular business or organisation, this is different. As a result, you might not ‘own’ your website or its source code, and switching to a different provider could cause problems. You might have access to the graphic and some of the content, but not the underlying system.
Are You a Good Fit for Open Source?
For any web project, open source systems like Drupal, WordPress, or Laravel are excellent options.
They heavily rely on peer review, collaborative modification, and ongoing improvement in addition to community contribution. Since they are created by entire communities rather than a single developer or one firm, they are frequently less expensive, more adaptable, more long-lasting than proprietary software.