Inspiration (ĭn'spe-rā'shun): a) Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity. b) The condition of being so stimulated by an external source. There's a tight line between inspiration and imitation. Inspiration means captivate an idea and develop it further. Imitation means identify an idea and use it.

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Here we are at the dawn of a new week. Today is tuesday (yesterday was an official day off in Belgium, hence the "no article" article...), and we start the second half of our 12-article series over open-source CMSes. Last week, we've been through Joomla!, Drupal, Typo3, DotClear, TextPattern and Plone. This week, we have 6 more platforms to review, and we'll start by MODx.

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There'll be no article today; but we'll be back tomorrow with the 2nd part of our CMS Week series, and we'll review MODx.

In our series of CMS Week articles, the system we're reviewing today, Plone, is a kind of special animal. First, it's not everybody's CMS — understand: it will not be easily tamed. Second, it won't get satisfied with a basic PHP/MySQL environment. It'll require more than that: Python and Zope, to be exact. So, is it worth learning Python? (because you'll have to!) Let's find out.

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Gosh, already Friday? Time flies! We're nearly at the middle of our CMS Week article series. On the menu today, we have another « flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system, designed to help overcome hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages » (that's what the website says): TextPattern. Ready for your daily CMS dose? Let's go.

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As we continue our CMS Week article series, we stop today on a particular case: DotClear. Why is it particular? Because DotClear is not a full-featured CMS, strictly speaking — it's rather a blog engine with enhanced content management capabilities. And also, because it's the motor that powers our own website.

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Depending on feature richness and modularity, a content management system can be an investment not affordable for many - so the idea of looking for cheaper or even free alternatives comes to mind. There is actually a bunch of — more or less mature — solutions under Open Source or freeware licenses. Today we're reviewing Typo3, a powerful open-source solution.

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The problem with CMS is the more seamless they become, the harder they get to modify should they not do exactly what you want. Furthermore, fully featured CMS tent to bloat and run your server harder. As a Web Developer, you don't need a nice installer and could be quite happy editing a configuration file rather that clicking check boxes to get what you want. However, it's nice to offer both possibilities to the end user. Are you ready to meet Drupal?.

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Joomla! is one of the most popular CMS. On the one hand, it's definitely not as easy to set up as a personal blog on any free blogging platform, but on the other hand, it grants you total control on the way your website is displayed, managed and updated. And in case you need help, Joomla! features a highly detailed help section on its website which can bring light on any problem you may have during installation and configuration.

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These last 24 months, the blog has become a complete new way of communication. In addition to traditional information channels such as newspapers, radio and television, the web 2.0-powered internet enables a more modern, rapid information delivery. Blogging, today, is considered as natural as speaking or chatting.

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DevKick is another directory where you can find carefully hand-picked components and resources. Focusing web developers and designers, DevKick provides a well-organized space with a clean interface, where you can browse components, play with demos, read the latest news from the blog and experience the latest web development experiments in the lab section.

Allthrough DevKick is quite new (at least, in its current instantiation) and is a bit limited at the moment (about 70 scripts and components are listed), it has a great potential to grow fast and become a good and solid reference, like WebAppers or Smashing (which is more generalist, but offers great content for developpers, too).

» Visit DevKick

There will be no new articles this week, but one – friday or saturday. This is mainly due to some heavy workload (hey, who would complain about that!) and the redesign of the blog (which should happen in a few weeks). But wait, there's something HOT inside – come and read !

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