TYPO3 is a flexible and extensible enterprise-level web-based content management system, organised around a front-end which is displayed to, and/or interacts with, the wider world, and a back-end, which provides an environment which supports the entry, management and structuring of the content.

We discuss various scenarios directed at particular groups elsewhere on this website. Look there to find out what we can do for your organisation or group. 

This section has more to do with the technical side of the package - essentially, what it does, rather than what it can do for you.

TYPO3 is suitable for small to medium enterprises. In this context, "medium" can be as large as a local authority or UNESCO

UNESCO is an interesting site because TYPO3 is used only for the non-Latin part of it - yet integrates fairly seamlessly. This illustrates that you should make sure your server-side software is actually up to the task you are needing it to do - TYPO3 could clearly have coped with the Western European sections as well.

Small can be as small as you like, though if all you need is a few static web pages showing content in English which does not change very much, then you probably should look elsewhere.

TYPO3 is capable of meeting many needs and creating a wide range of solutions for many different organisations: in fact it can do pretty much anything that you see on professional sites on the web.

In addition to the display and management of information, TYPO3 provides very extensive interactivity. It is particularly useful in situations where support, information sharing and collaboration are important.

A full list of current features is maintained on the TYPO3 website

TYPO3 stores information in a database, for editable content, or on your web server, for items such as PDF files and images, and displays it through one or more (X)HTML templates.

Both back- and front-ends are flexibly configurable, based on the principle of access permissions for users and groups, so that your site can present different faces, interactions and content to different users, as well as to the various groups of people who contribute to its creation and management.

TYPO3 sites do not have a particular look and feel. The appearance of the site is up to the designer, limited mainly by what is possible on the web.

Templates give an overall look and feel to a page or set of pages, or may be connected to a particular function appearing within the overall look and feel.

The templating systems are applied directly to (X)HTML pages designed using any suitable editor such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression. Virtually any design can be implemented.

As many templates as are needed can be used in a given website. In principle, each page of your site could have a completely different design.

In this way the content of the site is maintained independently of the presentation, and this enables the site appearance to be updated independently of the content.

While nothing can protect you if your basic (X)HTML template is not standards-compliant, TYPO3 complies with a large number of international standards, and allows a single site to support a wide range of devices.

TYPO3 is only loosely a web-based content management system. It describes itself as a content management framework. It is this distinction which makes TYPO3 enormously more powerful and flexible than most of its competitors, and which also adds to the difficulty in describing exactly what it is and what it is good for.

TYPO3 consists of a core application (much like an operating system), which is designed to provide the abstract facilities and functions that are required for content management. To this are added extensions, which make use these facilities to do the content management.

One of these extensions is the (web-based) content management system, which provides basic functions for generating a website.

To this, in the website context, are added literally thousands of extensions, most of which are produced by people not directly connected with the main development team, and each of which performs a more-or-less complex piece of content management.

It is (relatively) straightforward to create new extensions, and although this is not for the unskilled, it follows that if you have a real need for something TYPO3 cannot currently do, if you have the resources, and it is in the right general area (i.e. content management), TYPO3 can probably be made to do it.

The configuration of the system is managed through an internal language, typoscript.

We discuss the philosophy and development strategies around TYPO3-based systems here 

An independent (but not necessarily up to date) summary of features and the capacity to compare the features of a large number of CMS packages  are on the CMS Matrix Website.

Unless your need is very specialised, in which case you may want to look at other types of package (a customer relationship manager, or directory software, for example) the answer is pretty much likely to be "yes".

Even if you do want these specialised functions, they can frequently be co-ordinated together seamlessly through TYPO3 extensions such as "Single Sign On".

These sites are by-and-large very large and complex. This indicates that you are unlikely to reach the limits of TYPO3.

The sites listed below give some idea of the flexibility and range of sites that can be produced using TYPO3. They are not necessarily designed by Gate Seven.

• Mansford Estate - site for an estate involved in housing transfer.
• Le Buffet - a group of restarants from Germany 
• Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut - Swiss Think Tank - multilingual site
• Metabo - large multilingual site of a powertool company
• Stop Child Trafficking - mutilingual site for a multinational voluntary organisation
• Native Instruments - multilingual site with e commerce and many community and interactive features
• Powys County Council - UK local authority site in parallel languages

TYPO3 is distributed as a base package, and a number of additional packages which, when added to the base, produce one of three packages:

• The dummy package
  Contains a completely blank website, and is the place to start developing a new website from
• The Test Package
  This includes examples of many techniques which are used when building TYPO3 websites. It is particularly useful for skeleton code for the various types of menus which TYPO3 supports.
• The Quickstart Package
  This is designed to be used in conjunction with a tutorial to familiarise you with working with TYPO3

If you have a PC you can get the Test and Quickstart packages installed on your PC ready to run in minutes by downloading an installer from here

Other installers are available from here