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Take a Free Ride with PHP-Nuke

As the old saying goes, the best things in life are free. And for small organizations that need a portal, this expression remains true. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty with some code, PHP-Nuke, portal software released under the gnu/gpl license, can be a gateway into managing a small-business or personal portal. Available through http://phpnuke.org (and with a popular offshoot, PostNuke, available from www.postnuke.com), it lets a PHP developer build a well-appointed portal replete with news feeds, instant messaging, polling, searching, and wireless access.

At its heart, PHP-Nuke is both an extensible framework and an out-of-the-box portal that offers administrative tools and a set of portlets, or modules, in PHP-Nuke jargon, all glued together by the PHP scripting language. At a trim 8mb, PHP-Nuke can run on any Web server that supports PHP. Its database management system maintains identity profiles and module data. PHP-Nuke can connect to many databases (including Microsoft sql Server and PostgreSQL). Most implementations use the open-source MySQL.

Although the portal installation is reasonably straightforward, we found the configuration of the Apache Web server and MySQL trying, and the documentation didn't help much with these steps. Once we had PHP-Nuke installed, a simple wizard walked us through the PHP-Nuke database creation.

PHP-Nuke offers several default modules. Among the more useful are basic Web site statistics, site search, polls, and a file repository. Portal users can also access a news and reviews module using a mobile device through an included AvantGo transform engine. Users can choose from several themes and language preferencesespecially welcome if your portal users are not all native English speakers.

PHP-Nuke's roots as a content management system show up in its content submission and workflow features. You can submit html content straight from the portal with one click. An editor with authoring privileges can then check in, check out, edit, and approve documents before they're released.

An administration console accessible through a Web browser manages all the portal assets. Here you lay out modules with size and position functions. Dozens of different themes, including many Flash animation themes, have been donated to the PHP-Nuke community, but many of them are buggy and require some low-level programming.

To set up permissions, an administrator must assign a user to a group. Based on the group setting, a user is granted access to designated areas of the site, as well as read, write, and edit privileges. Error checking and notification of broken pages are useful, but they require coding.

PHP-Nuke isn't intended for large-scale portal development. Nor does it have connectors for enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management software. But what it lacks in those areas it makes up for in well-executed design and a lower price.