Life With Opensource

Perhaps the cheapest way to launch a business on the internet is to use open source CMS software: the software itself is free and you can use low-cost hosting, providing the package offers access to a data base.
The whole concept points you towards setting up your own small Social Networking site.
The package provides the mechanisms for:-

• Controlling access and enrolling 'members';
• Allowing 'Wiki' type access for your visitors to add their own thoughts and knowledge;
• Structuring your site so that however big it grows even casual visitors can find the content they want, quickly and effectively.
  

The basic CMS software can be simply enhanced by importing open source 'modules' that can:-

• Add all the commercial features you need: shopping trolleys, payment systems etc
• Add video and sound files to make your site genuinely multi-media
• Improve the visibility of your site so that your would-be customers can find you on the internet

This list is anything but exhaustive.
Drupal, for one, has thousands of open source modules to meet every need and has dozens of open source 'themes' to control the appearance of your site.
Open source sites are particularly attractive to entrepreneurs who want to keep a particularly close relationship with the design and content of their site.
They allow a huge number of effects to be achieved by non-specialists in computer science and are particularly useful for niche marketeers, associations and clubs looking for their 'laity' to make an active contribution.
But as Lee Iacocca said 'there's no such thing as a free lunch'.
Open Source is a genuine 'lunch' and in direct financial terms it is free.
But it does have its drawbacks.
The providers of open source are generous with their talents but you have no contract with them and they are not guaranteeing either your skills or your internet host's services.
Inevitably in case of trouble you have to identify which of three potential causes is relevant.
I don't doubt that most of us have found problems difficult to solve with just two players, your hardware and your internet provider: how do you think it works with three? It happened to me, just weeks ago.
The quite normal process of updating one of Drupal's modules resulted in my site going down: panic, panic.
Three year's work and 300 pages all down the drain in a moment! When I returned to sea level I emailed my internet host's site and had them restore their day-before backup and lo and behold my site was up and running.
It just goes to show that cheapest is not necessarily best: I still don't know why the site went down in the first place or whether it will do so again.