Opus (content management system)

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Opus is a free, open source content management system for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets.

It is written in the PHP programming language and uses the MySQL database.

History

Opus is short for Opus Publishing System. Opus is also the penguin in Bloom County, a comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which Paul Oldham, who wrote most of the original Opus code, used to read avidly.

It was developed to publish a web site and online newspaper for the village of Milton, Cambridgeshire, UK, and then extended into a general-purpose CMS.

Features

Opus is easy to use, and once installed requires little or no knowledge of PHP, MySQL or HTML to maintain. The default layout has a sidebar with links to articles, and a top-left icon, with a main panel extended right from the sidebar in which the content resides but it is possible, through the use of templates, to create web pages laid out in any way the site owner wishes. It supports the publication of news articles in a most-recent-first format with an option to allow blogging and to add an RSS feed. It has a flexible authentication system that allows editors to be granted selective rights over different areas of the site.

Community

The Opus CMS is in use across many web sites, particularly charity and local community groups, and Parish Councils, but it is also used by a number of companies too.

See also

Free software portal

• List of content management systems

References

External links

• Official Opus website
• Download Opus
• "The Hug", the people who wrote it