Most web sites can be built quickly using free OpenSource web applications. Some of the applications offered by QED Software are shown below. Along with a short description of each application is a link to a very special web site that allows you to test drive the software before you decide if you want to use it. We encourage everyone to visit this site to get a feel for how each software package operates. You will be able to use each package in both an administrator capacity and as a user (visitor of your site). While you are there, if you see something that you really like, let us know--we may be able to support it on your new site.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. This site is built using Joomla!
Demo

Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to set up scores of different kinds of web sites. Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.
Demo

XOOPS is a program that allows administrators to easily create dynamic websites with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more.
Demo

Galleries

4Images is a powerful web-based image gallery management system. Features include comment system, user registration and mangagement, password protected administration area with browser-based upload and HTML templates for page layout and design. More features are: RSS feeds, search engine, automatic thumbnail generation, extensive user administration, upload function for users, showing IPTC and EXIF data of images, rating of images, spam protection, protection against hotlinking, newsletter function, e-cards, integrated database backup function, etc.
Demo

Coppermine Photo Gallery is a picture gallery script. Users can upload pictures with a web browser or Windows XP Web Publishing Wizard (thumbnails are created on the fly), add comments, send e-cards, rate pictures and have their own gallery. The admin can manage albums/pictures/comments and batch add pictures that have been uploaded by FTP. The script has a theme system and is available in the following languages : Bosnian, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (standard and Brazilian), Russian and Spanish. The script use PHP, a MySQL database and the GD library (version 1.x or 2.x) or ImageMagick to make the thumbnails. An install script makes the installation very fast and easy.
Demo

Forums

Simple Message Forum (SMF) - Elegant. Effective. Powerful. Free. SMF is all of the above. SMF is a next-generation community software package and is jam-packed with features, while at the same time having a minimal impact on resources.
Demo

Blog Engines

Nucleus - With Nucleus, you can set up one or more weblogs. If you want to, you can even show the contents of multiple weblogs on the same page. Each blog has its own team of authors. Some authors will only have posting rights, others will be allowed to change settings for the blog as well. Within a weblog, you can set up one or more categories. Each item you add in your weblog will be put in one of these categories. Nucleus provides a built-in Commenting System, so there's no need for external commentingtools. A karma-voting system is also provided.
Demo

Serendipity is a weblog/blog system, implemented with PHP. It is standards compliant, feature rich and open source (BSD License). Serendipity is constantly under active development, with a team of talented developers trying to make the best PHP powered blog on the net.
Demo

Wordpress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
Demo

Wikis

MediaWiki is the collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other projects. It's designed to handle a large number of users and pages without imposing too rigid a structure or workflow.
Demo