The Best Open Source Web Development Tools
Many individuals have aspirations to create their own websites but don't know where to begin. Maybe you are a developer looking for a system to allow you to create sites more effectively. Open-source Web-development tools grant developers and consumers alike the ability to have a fully functional and customizable site and the community support to see their projects to the end. Most importantly, open-source Web-development tools are free.
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What is Open-Source?
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As defined by the Open Source Initiative, software developed as open must have free redistribution, available source code and allow derived works. There are other regulations such as anti-discriminatory clauses and licensing, but it mainly boils down to allowing software to be freely manipulated and distributed by other individuals. This modified software can even be sold if no other licenses have been placed on the software preventing this. One of the most popular examples of open source software outside of Web-development is the Android mobile operating system.
Joomla!
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Joomla! is an open-source content management system, or CMS for short. Joomla! prides itself on its ease of use, robust developer community and boasts that it powers 2.7 percent of all Internet sites. Joomla! basically gives you the building blocks to a site and by modifying and installing different modules, you are able to customize a site to you liking. Many professional developers use Joomla! to build sites for clients, and popular chains such as IHOP use Joomla! to power their site.
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Drupal
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Drupal is also an open-source CMS project. Drupal is a very powerful tool that allows for extensive customizations. Drupal is not as user-friendly as other CMS, but if you have a moderate understanding of Web-development, you should be able to learn to effectively use the system.Like Joomla!, Drupal has a large developer community that produce quality plug-ins and modules to help your site.
Aptana Studio
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Aptana Studio is a very useful Web-development IDE, or integrated development environment. Aptana Studio helps you easily develop your website by basically giving you a cheat sheet for HTML, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Ruby. It also has a built-in debugger so you can find out what is going wrong with your code. Aptana also features "one-shot" deployment, which allows you to upload your site to your server automatically. Aptana basically makes the actual coding aspect of Web-development much easier.
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References
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