Unless you've always used a Mac or are new to Windows PCs, you've probably experienced the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) more than once. Though annoying (and sometimes extremely aggravating), the BSoD is usually resolved by restarting Windows. Yesterday, thanks to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I learned about the Web analog to the BSoD – it's called the White Screen of Death (WSoD).

Unlike the good old BSoD, the WSoD is an open-source affliction, related to PHP programming errors. What makes the WSoD worthy of a mention in the SF Chronicle (and this blog), is the fact it directly effects WordPress – a widely deployed blog engine and light-weight CMS – and Drupal, an equally popular open-source CMS, which competes with SiteExecutive.

When the WSoD occurs, afflicted sites render blank pages. And if I understood the Chronicle article correctly, the problem can also impact the Admin pages in WordPress. Thus, your site visitors get blank pages with NO content and you cannot administer your blog or Website – NICE!

Both WordPress and Drupal are know for making content management easy for end users. This certainly contributes to their popularity, which is also fueled by their cost – they're free (sort of). In actuality, for most organizations, the total cost of ownership (TCO) for these applications is far from free. Factor in the costs (whether you're paying for internal colleagues or third-party consultants) of support, development, add-on modules, integration and downtime and the numbers can add up.

So, if you're considering an open source CMS, please take into account the time, effort and expertise required for managing open source code – and be prepared to contend with the business impact of WSoD.

Alternatively, if you are looking for an affordable, reliable (and easy to use) CMS on which you can dependably run your organization's Website, we suggest SiteExecutive – especially if you choose our SaaS offering, which gets you a fully supported, hosted CMS and Website, with SLAs for performance and availability.