The truth website developer's never wanted you to know about 'their' CMS Solution.

Drupal, Word Press, Joomla, Mambo, PostNuke, PHPBB: They are all Open Source CMS (Content Management Systems) of sorts: The result of combined effort from hundreds (possibly thousands) of well-meaning volunteers. Open Source, means these products are absolutely free to use on your website, right now. Why is it then, that website developers are charging you thousands of dollars for them?

Unfortunately, that’s a question no one seems to be asking, and one that we cannot answer. We can, however, offer you some equally big questions to ask before you engage any website developer; and take a wag at the answer's you'll probably get if you do.

1: Who actually developed your CMS?

The truth about many website developers:

The company selling you the CMS had absolutely nothing to do with actually developing  the CMS. They have no understanding of the code running behind the CMS they’re selling you. You’re essentially dealing with a sales department not a genuine website developer with the skills needed to deliver a solution tailored to your specific business needs, either now, or in the future.

The truth about Refreshweb:

Your CMS has been developed entirely by Refreshweb, using structured programming techniques. We therefore have an intimate understanding of the code behind each CMS we deliver, because we wrote it. Our ability to customize, and support your CMS website is profound, both now, and in the future.

2: What are you paying for?

The truth about many website developers:

You’re paying for something that was entirely free and available to you in the first place, if you’d only known about it. Rather than telling you about it, the developer has chosen to exploit your ignorance in this field, and sell the same system to you for a massive profit.

The truth about Refreshweb:

A CMS solution from Refreshweb generally costs the same, or even less, than the ‘free’ systems other developers will attempt to sell you. This is because we base our business on integrity and honesty, not exploiting people: We put our prices on our website for all to see, because our quotes are fixed around how much a job actually costs, not how much money a client might appear to have.

3: What did the Web Developer Invest in your CMS?

The truth about many website developers:

The CMS being sold to you for thousands of dollars was actually free and available to you, directly, in the first place. It cost your developer nothing and it shouldn't cost you anything either.

The truth about Refreshweb:

We developed our own software because we want it to be the finest system available to your business. Our goal has always been to ensure we deliver a product that is user-friendly, search-engine-friendly, stable, secure, and fully customizable. Our CMS application is currently powering well over 100 live websites and counting. We’ve invested 4 years of development into our product to ensure we continue to achieve these goals.

4: How secure is your CMS?

The truth about many website developers:

Open source software is just that: uncompiled source code that can be openly viewed by anyone on the planet, including hackers. Injection points and security vulnerabilities are often identified in these systems, even in recent releases. The beauty of open source is that when this happens, the vulnerabilities are quickly patched by diligent volunteers who publicly document the nature of the vulnerability and what the patch does to fix it. Unfortunately hackers are also made aware of vulnerabilities and can seek out unpatched websites to exploit / deface / destroy them. If your website developer has charged you big money for a free product, it’s unlikely they’ll be ethical enough to freely keep your site patched. And if your CMS does happen to feature customization, its likely new patches and releases will be incompatible– leaving you with the difficult choice of scrapping your whole site to apply the patch, or sitting wide-open for ongoing attacks from hackers.

The truth about Refreshweb:

• Hackers cannot access your website’s uncompiled source code. This is carefully guarded as the first tier of protection against attack.
• All our passwords are hashed within the database, even we cannot retrieve your passwords, should you lose them (although we can reset them for you, as needed).
• All our eCommerce systems are delivered over certified, 128bit encrypted, secure sockets.
• All credit card details in our ecommerce systems are purged from the database as soon as they are processed.
• As we continually review and refine the CMS software we deliver, we also retrofit older sites with improved security features and patches for the lifetime of your site, free of charge.
• All our website inputs are subjected to stringent sanitization filters to prevent input injection attacks.
• All include files are fetched from within specified locations within our server to block file injection attacks.
• All mail header’s are hard coded to block mail header injection attacks.
• Our servers run the latest spam filters, anti-virus, network firewalls and application firewalls to block most general forms of attack.
• All website’s are backed up on rotation every 3 days.
• Additionally, all Database changes are backed up off-site every time you log out of your CMS.
• All your website source code is also backed up off site.

Conclusion

Upon reading this article, you still believe your business is better served using an open source solution,  we’d like to point out that all our hosting packages allow you to automatically install and configure dozens of applications onto your web server with virtually NO technical knowledge: Including Mambo / Joomla; absolutely free.

Open source software is a beautiful concept and we strongly support and applaud the open source community for their efforts. There are many ethical and honest developers and consultants utilizing such platforms to afford their clients an inexpensive service. There are also many firms simply exploiting both unsuspecting clients and the open source community by re-selling free products at grossly inflated prices. We hope this article helps to equip you with the necessary knowledge to draw the distinction.