Over the last few years, open source web applications have gained real traction on the web. From individuals to small businesses, non-profit organizations to public institutions and large corporate agencies, all across the board a growing number of websites are using open source technologies to turn the gears.

But what works for one, won’t work for all, and quite often the sucess of your site may depend on that very first decision you make in selecting one tool over another. So how do you choose which tool(s) to use?

Here are a couple scenarios to set the stage:

Scenario 1 - You’re the local web designer/developer of your company and you’ve been tasked with selecting an open source tool to re-create your company’s corporate website. You know there needs to be some blog-like functionality, and it would be nice to add things like RSS feeds, maybe a photo gallery, and maybe some online forms for customers to contact your company reps. It needs to look sharp and have the interactivity, but most of all, you’re under a tight timeline to get something up.

Scenario 2 - You’re a small business owner wanting to redesign your online presence and maybe add something like a blog, maybe some more interactive features, and you’d really like to be able to update the content yourself without having to contract out copy-and-paste jobs to the local web boutique. You have high ambitions for the type of features you’re looking for, but are also on a tight budget.

Scenario 3 - You’re a web entrepreneur about to embark on your next project. You’ve seen some sites already that sorta do what you want to do, but not quite, but they’re pretty close, and now you’re in the process of deciding how you’re going to build this next site of yours. You need to roll something out quickly, but also need to be sure that you can maintain this initial creation and handle the future growth you’re planning for your project.

In all these scenarios, you’ll likely consider using some open source application - it will get you a head start on implementation and give you close to instant access to advanced functionality, and all for a (perceived) cost of free.

But, with the recent swell in adoption of open source platforms, the decision of which tools to use might not be as straightforward as you might think. Some common questions will arise:

• Where do you start? How do you start the selection process of an open source product?
• How do you decide which tool to go with and which to rule out?
• Once you’ve selected an open source tool, what level of customization are you going to have to do?
• What will you customize yourself, and what will you look towards community-created plugins and modules for?
• What sorts of resources are you going to need? Where will you find the talent and expertise if you don’t have it internally? And what will that cost now and in the future?

This is the first in a series of articles looking at steps you can go through to make the best choice to suit your needs (and your capabilities).

Step 1 - Do some “guerilla” market research

One way to select a platform is to do a little market research - guerilla style. Go visit some other sites that are doing what you want to do with your own web project and take a peek under the hood (Noob hint: hit Ctrl + U or Command + U for Macheads to quickly view the source code, or click through your browser’s menu looking for something like View > Page Source or Source Code).

While some developers go to great lengths to hide the fact they’re using an open source platform, many will show you in plain sight that their sites are, for example, powered by WordPress or Drupal. Some tell-tale signs of WordPress and Drupal:

WordPress’ footprints

• Do a search for “wp-content” in the source code - this is the default directory where WordPress stores things like the site’s template theme
• Look for something like <meta name=“generator” content=“WordPress 2.5″ /> - this is generated by default as well and will appear unless the developer decided to remove it from the template

Drupal’s footprints

• Look for a series of lines near the top of the source code that follow a pattern like:<…../modules/….>
  <…../modules/….>
  <…../modules/….>
  <…../modules/….>

  Modules are Drupal’s way of letting developers add pre-canned features that other developers in the open source community have created - it’s a way for you to pick and choose to add just the extra features and tools you’re looking for.

• Another sign of a Drupal-powered site is a line with:/modules/cck/CCK is an acronym for “Content Construction Kit” and is one of the most popular modules for Drupal that lets developers add greater customization to the default Drupal installation.

Ok, so why does this matter?

Based on what you’re seeing in the source code compared to what you see through the user interface, you may also start to get a sense of how much customization or extension is needed to achieve the functionality you’re looking for.

Now again, sometimes developers will take steps to re-write the original template source code to remove traces of the tools being used, but by and large most will keep some hints behind and, in the case of Drupal for example, if you see an abundant number of /modules/ added, that’s your first sign that they went through some fairly extensive work to achieve the functionality they have on their site.

After you’ve looked through a handful of sites that seem to offer the type of features and functionality you’re looking for in your own site, you’ll get a sense of what the preferred tool of choice seems to be. There’s nothing wrong with replicating what the most successful sites are doing. In fact, it’s probably in your best interest to do so.

There’s a little bit of game theory involved here. You’re not the only one taking a peek at the source code to see how the bigger players are powering their sites - a lot of other folks are doing this too. The more people who adopt a particular open source tool, the more likely there will continue to be strong adoption and further development of the technology, and the more likely you’ll have a reliable community you can turn to for help in the future.

Next step (to come in a future article): Determine your capacity to set up and maintain the open source tool

Make sense? Anything Else?

This is just one of a handful of different ways to gather your own pieces of “web intelligence”. What else would you do? What tricks do you use?