Lean times are upon us, and I suspect the temptation to explore open source solutions will grow stronger as organizations seek to rein in their costs. Fortunately, the prospect of installing, maintaining, and supporting open source applications is not nearly as daunting as it may have been in the past. One word has changed things dramatically over the past few years: Fantastico.

What is Fantastico? Without getting too technical, it is a turnkey approach to installing software applications on a Web server. It works within, cPanel, which is one of the most common control panel interfaces used by hosting providers. If you host your Web site with a provider who offers cPanel, you simply log in to your account in the same way you might log in to Expedia, or Amazon, or any other Web-based account, and Fantastico is among the options you will find available to you.

So what can Fantastico do for you? Mainly, it enables installation of common open source applications in just a few clicks. And it also provides a way for updating these installations, as new versions become available, with one or two clicks. The range of applications it supports is quite impressive. You can visit the site of its maker, Netenberg, for a full list, but just to give you an idea, here are a few of the ones with which I am most familiar:

• Content Management: Both Drupal and Joomla!, the two leading open source content management systems are supported with Fantastico scripts. I’ve used both of these systems, and they are very impressive. Aside from being Fantastico-friendly, both have large user group communities, increasingly good documentation, and a growing number of firms that offer commercial support packages to go with them.
• Blogging Platform: Wordpress, my personal favorite for blogging (and the platform on which Hedgehog & Fox is built), is among the multiple blogging platforms supported by Fantastico. While you can simply go with Wordpress.com to get a great deal (free) on a hosted Wordpress blog, hosting your own offers significantly more access to and control over the wide range of features available to Wordpress bloggers. In addition to Fantastico, Wordpress itself, in combination with the cPanel control panel, makes it quite easy to install new plugins for Wordpress.
• Learning Management: I come from the world of commercial learning management systems, and I think there can be good reasons in many cases to go with a commercial option. Still, it is undeniable that the open source Moodle platform is a very impressive system and one that will fit the needs of many organizations well. (I am using it for a current client project and am continually impressed with the range of capabilities it offers.) As with Drupal and Joomla, Moodle benefits from a very large user community, solid documentation, and a growing number of commercial firms that can support it.

The list goes on. There are e-commerce applications, discussion forums, customer suppot platforms, and survey tools, just to name a few. Fantastico-supported applications may not be able to meet all of your Web needs, but they probably come pretty close. And in many cases, if your organization does not place huge demands on server infrastructure, you can get all of this for $5-10 per month.

So What’s the Catch?

Fantastico is, well, fantastic. But it’s definitely not perfect. Indeed, you will find some pretty heated critiques of it if you do a bit of searching. (See, for example, Fantastico Deluxe: An Insecure Recipe for Disaster - but be sure to read all the comments, too.) Lower quality hosting providers, for example, may not take appropriate measures to keep scripts up to date or to ensure that Fantastico is providing for secure installations of software, so it is important to work with a reputable provider. Personally, I use BlueHost. I have done many Fantastico installs with them (including Wordpress installation used for this blog) and have never had an issue.

Another issue is that upgrades may not always go perfectly with Fantastico. For example, changes you make to how your software is configured may be overridden during an upgrade. I encountered this problem not too long ago in trying to upgrade a Joomla! site. As with upgrades done by any other method, you have to be prepared to do some quality assurance work after the new code is installed.

Finally, Fantastico is typically configured to install only the core parts of a software application. To get all of the bells & whistles you want, you will probably have to do some additional work. For many open source applications, though - and I know from experience this is true of the ones listed above - installing new features is as simple as uploading a file and turning the feature “on” using a Web interface in the application itself. You dont’ have to be a techie, or really anywhere close to one, to do it.

A key question to ask yourself about any of the above concerns is “Would all of these disappear with a proprietary software provider?” I suspect most readers have enough experience with proprietary provider to know the answer to that question is “no.” You will encounter issues and face a learning curve no matter which path you take. Both open source and proprietary solutions have their advantages and disadvantages. My point here is not to argue that Fantastico and the other tools that help support use of open source are so perfect that proprietary options do not need to be considered. Rather, I’m simply pointing out that open source is now a much easier and more viable option than many organizations may realize. And given tight times, they may deserve a much closer look than your organization has previously given them.

Give It A Try

Perhaps the biggest upside of something like Fantastico is that you can use it to try out some really great, powerful software applications at very low cost. Simply set up an account with a provider like BlueHost for $5-10 per month, go into your control panel, and install whatever applications interest you. Then kick the tires thoroughly. Even if you decide to go with something else or pay a commercial provider to take over full responsibility for an open source application, this gives you a very cheap way to do some of your due diligence.

So, don’t get bogged down in thinking that open source sounds nice but is too hard to actually use. Things have changed greatly for the better, and it’s time to wake up and smell the code - it’s Fantastico.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

P.S. - If you enjoy what you read here on Hedgehog & Fox, I encourage you to subscribe to the feed or use the form at the upper right corner to subscribe by e-mail.

Originally posted @ Hedgehog & Fox