Dotclear Hosting: Compare Hosting

What Is Dotclear Hosting?

If you are in search of a content management system that is easy to use and features a host of customization options, Dotclear could be the right choice for you.

Dotclear is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP. Originally released in 2003 by Olivier Meunier, Dotclear has risen in popularity among French websites and is now run by a team of developers dedicated to bringing a clean and easy to use CMS to the public.

Installation

Dotclear features a streamlined, automatic installation that can be run on almost any server in as little as two easy steps. With this installation, in minutes you can have the framework of your new website running ready for your first post.

Themes and Templates

One of the most important aspects of any site is how it looks. Dotclear offers a fully customizable theme that allows you to tweak almost every aspect of your site to get the look that you want. In addition, there are many themes available for download at no charge that will instantly give you the look you are going for.

Structure is just as important as how it looks. In many cases, it can be difficult to change the basic structure of your site without being an coding expert. Dotclear offers an easy to use template language system that allows you to more easily modify your site’s structure so all of the information flows exactly how you want it. Of course, if you prefer to dive into the code of Dotclear to make the changes, you have that freedom so you can work on your site how you want, whenever you want.

Other Features

Dotclear offers a wide range of features designed to simplify the management of your site.

• Easy publication – Not every user is a computer expert, therefore it is important to make it as easy as possible to publish new content. Dotclear simplifies that process by providing an easy to use editor that allows users to add formatting to create beautiful posts easily.
• User friendly administration – Creating new content on your site should be simple and free of lengthy menus and and endless clicks through multiple windows to complete your task. Dotclear feature an easy to use administration interface that is designed with users in mind and emphasizes functionality regardless of user experience.
• Media management – A website is only as strong as the media it provides meaning you need great images and videos on all your posts to attract users and hold their attention. Dotclear makes it easy to upload any type of media file to your site and simplifies the process of placing the media in your post. You can even include movies and music on your posts simply by adding the URL of the file from the host.
• Flexible comments – With every post you want to try to start a conversation with your users. The ability to comment on a post is vital to that conversation. Dotclear offers a flexible comment system that makes it easy to administer comments on each entry on your site and will help you remove unwanted or outdated comments naturally.
• Say no to spam – One of the most difficult things to deal with when running a website is the constant bombardment of spam you receive on a daily basis. Whether its to your email or in your comments sections, spam is something that must be dealt with by every website owner. Dotclear offers built-in spam protection to stop both comment and trackback spam in their tracks.
• Multi-user support – If you are starting a site that will have multiple users posting articles and other types of content, you need software to adequately support the needs of all your users while making it easy to administer at the same time. Dotclear provides support for multi-user sites and makes it easy for you, the website owner, to specify permissions on each user so you can control who can and cannot post to your site.
• Multi-blog support – If you are looking to create a website that includes several different blogs from different authors on your site, Dotclear comes with support for this feature built-in so you won’t have to add a plugin to run multiple blogs on your site.
• Scalability and performance – A slow site is a lonely site as users today don’t have the patience to wait for a slow site to load. Dotclear is fast allowing your website’s pages to load faster than many other platforms. You won’t have to worry about speed when your site starts to grow, either, as Dotclear is highly scalable promising great performance on both small and large sites alike.

Plugin Support

Dotclear may support a wide range of features right out of the box, but everybody has different needs for their site. While it is impossible to create a CMS that meets the needs of every website owner out the box, Dotclear has made it easy for plugin designers to create custom plugins to extend the capabilities of the CMS. There are already hundreds of plugins to help you customize your site and more are added all the time. So, if Dotclear can’t do something you need, chances are there is a plugin designed for exactly what you need. If not, you could always write one yourself and share it with the world.

Optimized for Search Engines

The Dotclear CMS has been designed to be search engine friendly out of the box making it easy for you to create content that will easily be recognized by the search engines so you can bring in more users and customers. You won’t have to spend hours configuring or altering code just to have your site recognized by all the search engines. It just works so you can start building your site to move up in the ranks of the search engines.

What Your Hosting Account Will Need

To install Dotclear on your site, your hosting plan must include PHP 5 or higher, and a supported database such as MySQL. You’ll also need file transfer protocol (FTP) access to upload the software to your site. Check with your hosting provider to ensure compatibility with Dotclear.