Top 12 Free Content Management Systems (CMS)
Building websites by hand with all html/css pages was fine a couple years ago, but these days there are a ton of awesome Content Management System options out there that make our jobs as developers and website publishers SO much easier!
So, What Exactly Is A Content Management System?
According to Wikipedia, they describe a CMS as follows:
A web content management system (WCMS or Web CMS) is a content management system (CMS) software, usually implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions.
So take a moment and look over the list below of the 12 best free cms options available. Some might seem really familiar (we love wordpress) and some others might be new to you. They all deserve your attention for a few minutes. Hell, even test drive a few of them and see if there’s any that might work for a new project – I’m currently digging into SilverStripe which looks to be pretty damn awesome!
And don’t forget to let us know in the comments section which is your favorite CMS and why!
WordPress ↓
WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. WordPress is also what SpyreStudios and Design Newz run on (as well as my blog design website and my Guerrilla Freelancing blog).
Joomla ↓
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Drupal ↓
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites
SilverStripe ↓
The SilverStripe CMS is a flexible open source Content Management System that gives everyone involved in a web project the tools they need to do their jobs.
Cushy CMS ↓
CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.
Frog CMS ↓
Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Born as phpRadiant in January 2007, Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS, a well known Ruby on Rails application. Although the two applications still share a family resemblance, Frog is charting its own development path.
MODx ↓
MODx helps you take control of your online content. An Open Source PHP application framework, it frees you to build sites exactly how you want and make them 100% yours. Zero restrictions and fast to build. Super-simple templates in regular HTML/CSS/JS (any lib you want). Registered user systems and a killer community. Welcome to web-building nirvana.
TYPOlight ↓
TYPOlight CMS is a web CMS that Uses Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies, has a live update feature for those of us who have multiple blogs, gives multi-language support and hosts a ton of other great features
dotCMS ↓
The fully functional GPL version of dotCMS continues to forge ahead – providing bleed–edge features and the latest code to a thriving community of developers and users.
Expression Engine ↓
ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website. If you’re tired of the limitations of your current CMS then take ExpressionEngine for a spin…
Radiant CMS ↓
Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams that was built on Ruby on Rails. It gives an endless list of awesome features and is definitely worth checking out.
concrete5 ↓
A CMS made for Marketing, but strong enough for Geeks! Concrete5 is an open source content management system. It’s revolutionary – and it’s free.
Learn to build your own CMS with PHP ↓
If you’d like to build your own CMS, Jason Lengstorf has an amazing tutorial posted on CSS-Tricks that will show you step by step how to build a simple CMS for your own website using PHP. It’s definitely worth checking out – I followed the tut and use it for a small note keeping page (similar to a to-do list) and learned a lot about php along the way :)
Your Turn To Talk
So, which CMS do you use? I’m sure many of you folks use WordPress, but have you tried any of the ones listed here? Which one(s) do you like better, and why?
About the author:
Mike Smith releases wordpress themes on a regular basis and is also a blog designer at Guerrilla.
jump to the comment form ↓
June 18th, 2009
How about RefineryCMS – http://www.refinerycms.com
June 18th, 2009
@Patrick – Thats another good one. Don’t know how I missed that.
Also, the guys/girls over at http://www.tutsplus.com have a tuts+ tutorial on building your own CMS which is definitely worth taking a look at
June 18th, 2009
Umbraco – http://www.umbraco.org – should also get a mention and it’s free.
June 18th, 2009
My votes go to WordPress and ExpressionEngine :)
June 18th, 2009
I find WordPress extremely inelegant and clunky. Expression Engine is superior in every way in my opinion.
June 18th, 2009
I’ve been trying to learn Drupal. It has a lot of potential, it’s free and it has a great developer community. The only problem it’s hard for designers to convert psd layout into well functioning site. There are themes of course, but starting from scratch is a little hard. There is definitely a steep learning curve. I heard good things about Expression Engine, I just wish it was free.
June 18th, 2009
@Gene: Drupal is great! I prefer Expression Engine though (and even more WordPress), oh and the EE Core is free btw: https://secure.expressionengine.com/download.php :)
June 19th, 2009
I have heard and seen several people recommend Joomla over WordPress. Why would you choose one over the other?
June 19th, 2009
I have just been playing with Perch (http://grabaperch.com/), which is a magnificent little CMS (providing the same sort of functionality as CushyCMS except that it’s all in your own control. OK, it’s not free, but is very cheap all the same. (I thought since EE is mentioned here–which is essentially a commercial product, even though the limited core version is free–it’s fair to mention Perch too.)
June 19th, 2009
I’d change the order of the list, but the most famous one are here (in the past e107 was another good solution and the php-nuke like systems). When I got web presence I had my own minimalistic CMS and forum. The forum was quite well written, with different topics, avatars, bb codes, privilege levels, etc. After a while I was introduced to WordPress and fell in love. I also tried Joomla (Mamboo), Drupal and a bunch of other CMS, but in my opinion they are too complicated. WordPress is just an ideal base you can build upon. No need for complex systems to downgrade it. It is better to complete WordPress to serve your needs.
June 19th, 2009
Why not look at Habari : http://habariproject.org/en/
Made by dissatisfied WP developers, who wanted to start over and do things the right way …
Free ( of course ) and highly recommended ( very usable, but still beta ).
June 19th, 2009
CMS Made Simple is also worth a mention. I’ve heard it highly recommended, though I haven’t used it.
June 19th, 2009
This list is nice, but more than incomplete. E.g. it’s missing several leading Java CMS like OpenCms and HippoCms.
June 19th, 2009
I miss Typo3 (http://www.typo3.org) the most complete cms in my opinion. for quick small sites i use wordpress.
June 19th, 2009
I work at a web dev shop that has standardized on eZ Publish. We’ve been really happy with it. It has a pretty steep learning curve, but once you move on beyond that its way more flexible than most other CMS’s (IMHO). We’re planning on moving to Solr for search soon, and they have their own plug in.
Good community, good paid support options, and a really clean coding style. I’d recommend them.
http://ez.no
June 19th, 2009
AxCMS.net is free and suitable for entrprises seeking to build larger internet and intranet portals:
http://www.AxCMS.net
There are more than 4500 installations worldwide …
June 19th, 2009
@Ralph: Perch costs £35 and takes about an hour to setup. CushyCMS is free and takes about 2 minutes.
June 19th, 2009
I’d go with CMS Made Simple also, having struggled with page templates in Joomla I found it much easier and quicker to implement.
June 19th, 2009
I use WordPress on 90% of my sites, and find it’s huge developer community and mass of free plugins a joy – as well as the incredibly intuitive admin area.
I have also used Typo3 on a number of sites, which whilst very powerful is a pain to use in the admin area.
June 19th, 2009
CMS Made Simple is a really good solution for small projects, as it use smarty it is very easy to integer any webdesign, and it’s very easy to use for your customers.
Another ressource for best cms : http://www.packtpub.com/open-s.....us-winners
June 19th, 2009
how about Textpattern ?
June 19th, 2009
Nice article.
For me, Frog is by far the best. It is lightweight and simple and not feature heavy like the rest.
June 19th, 2009
CMS Made Simple
June 19th, 2009
You forget one of the most flexible: Contenido >> http://www.contenido.org
June 19th, 2009
forgot plone?
http://plone.org/
June 19th, 2009
I only know WordPress, Drupal and Joomla because I am regularly buying templates for them at http://www.templatemonster.com
June 19th, 2009
I used Joomla before but when I found out about WordPress and when I tried it… Now I wouldn’t change it for anything! :)
Good list!
June 19th, 2009
Don’t even a line for Liferay?,a 10 years old project and already 3 published books about it so far
June 19th, 2009
Why is eZ Publish almost never mentioned in these round ups? I’ve always found it far superior to both drupal and wordpress.. I guess maybe it’s a bit too complicated to hit the “mainstream” the way wp and drupal have.
-Erlend
June 19th, 2009
I agree with Ralph, that CMS Made Simple http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ should be recommended, because it’s easy to use, easy for templating and it just works :)
June 19th, 2009
How about REDAXO CMS (http://www.redaxo.de) …
my favourite german CMS.
grz. Chris
June 19th, 2009
When you’re talking about free CMS, you’ve got to mention DotNetNuke (DNN). It’s a free asp.net based CMS.
June 19th, 2009
Awesome post about the leading top-twelve CMS systems out there, many thanks.
June 19th, 2009
We just recently chose Rails-based BrowserCMS, mainly because of the recommendation by the Agile Philanthropy Group and their pledge for support. The story remains to be written as to whether we made the right choice.
June 19th, 2009
BrowserCMS for Rails guys is good option too.
http://github.com/browsermedia.....ree/master
June 19th, 2009
A newly recrafted CMS from Browser Media deserves mention: http://browsercms.org
It is extremely extensible, has many powerful features built in, and makes it easy for a non-technical user to customize and work with their site. Best CMS in Rails right now.
June 19th, 2009
@Ralph – I’ve heard mixed reports about Perch. For some its just tooo basic.
June 19th, 2009
Hey man, u missed the epitome. Where is textpattern ??!!
June 19th, 2009
How do people feel about MovableType?
June 19th, 2009
No mention of Symphony – http://www.symphony-cms.com/
Highly configurable, XSLT templating, fast and easily extensible.
June 19th, 2009
For java developers: http://www.riotfamily.org.I used it in my previous project and it’s a great tool.
June 19th, 2009
Let me suggest AdvaCMS: http://adva-cms.org
It’s a modularized CMS, Wiki, Forum, Newsletter, Blog, Calendar, Gallery.. written in Rails
June 19th, 2009
Don’t forget DotNetNuke -I love the modularization!
June 19th, 2009
I think symphony is should be on here. It’s different from most CMS’s and is really flexible and easy to use.
http://symphony-cms.com
June 19th, 2009
Seems you’re missing an important one:
PivotX (http://pivotx.net)
It’s a highly flexible and easy to use blogging CMS.
June 19th, 2009
@Peter – thanks for mentioning that one. Definitely a contender for the top 12 list.
June 19th, 2009
I’m surprised you made no mention at all of Plone; that’s one of the most popular CMS’s. It dwarfs most of the CMS’s you’ve mentioned. Typo3 was left out too.
June 19th, 2009
Did you look at Verb? http://verbcms.com
June 19th, 2009
Thank you, didn’t know many of those. I’m going to try radiant, but right now my favorite is Textpattern.
June 19th, 2009
Wow! Not even a mention of Movable Type (free for personal use). How far they’ve fallen :(
June 19th, 2009
A new Rails CMS called Browser CMS is looking pretty good. http://www.browsercms.org
June 19th, 2009
Your article is a good starting point in exploring CMSs. However, it seems to me that the comparison is a little too shallow. The blurb beside each photo is very short and not terribly informative, which leaves the reader to make decisions based on the screenshot. This is deceiving, since most (if not all) CMSs can be modified with themes/templates. Perhaps a few words about ease of install/use/theme or a short description of your personal experience with it would have been far more useful. Still, a good start :)
June 19th, 2009
I think Textpattern should also get a mention. Textpattern
June 19th, 2009
Great compilation of CMSs…I’m always happy to see MODx in such good company :)
June 19th, 2009
I still use Textpattern. I like how simple it is, and they don’t try and apply any of their own “look”. The user community is great too.
June 19th, 2009
I always see blogware like WordPress listed with a true CMS like C5 or Concrete5. It is true that blog content is content and WordPress handles that as well as Static pages very well but it is not a good fit for other types of content like a Modx, Joomla or Drupal application is.
As you can tell, I am particular about “CONTENT” management systems and I am looking for the best of the best… out of the package (currently) my favorite is C5 Concrete5 but it is still not perfect but it is Super easy to work with and love the LIVE editor that Modx also sports.
Looking for the “SMALLEST, FASTEST, CMS”? try NanoCMS, it is as described, except for my definition of Content .
June 19th, 2009
What, No Plone?: http://plone.org
June 19th, 2009
Cool. WordPress tops the link.
June 19th, 2009
nothing can come than wordpress… WP always the best … :)
June 19th, 2009
I love WordPress and Joomla. I used CushyCMS too and for some clients, that’s the BEST SOLUTION. I hope to find more/better CMS systems like cushy.
June 19th, 2009
WordPress is a great tool.
I would also give a vote for CMS Made Simple. Great CMS that can fully customized. We have been developing with CMSMS for a couple years and see no need or reason to switch.
June 19th, 2009
You forgot Chyrp!
http://chyrp.net/
June 19th, 2009
Expression Engine is our preferred CMS.
June 19th, 2009
Another free .NET CMS with commercial editions: Kentico CMS for ASP.NET – used by clients in 74 countries. See http://www.kentico.com
June 19th, 2009
What’s the best CMS to use for a real estate web site (one that contains listing and a few other pages)?
June 19th, 2009
@Take Sunset – you can use wordpress for that and check out some of the premium wordpress theme websites like http://www.woothemes.com / http://www.studiopress.com / http://www.gorillathemes.com for their premium real estate style themes.
June 19th, 2009
you missed http://dotclear.org/ as well, as nice blog CMS
June 19th, 2009
I use WordPress, primarily.
Just a thought: Why would you write your own CMS? If you know enough php/MySQL to do that, you probably don’t need this article anyway.
June 19th, 2009
I’m not sure I agree with WordPress being on this list since it’s much more a blogging software rather than a CMS. After about 6 months of forcing a blogging software to work like a CMS, I realized there’s a massive difference in the two.
June 19th, 2009
If you try any serious CMS capabilities with wordpress you’re going to be pulling your hair out.
Want an image gallery? Custom write fields? Your stuck.
It’s a great blogging platform – probably the best.
Expression Engine out of the box is amazing. And you don’t have to deal with the headaches of third party plugins like Joomlah and Drupal do.
June 19th, 2009
You’re* lol
June 19th, 2009
So does anyone else besides me think there are WAY too many CMSs? And few of them actually keep their promise, which is to be able to make the site editable by a non-techie users. I’ve used Joomla and WordPress and am considering that for personal sites where I’m the only one editing them, no CMS necessary. Really, what’s the point?
June 19th, 2009
CMS Made Simple is very good too. I think it should be at the list.
June 19th, 2009
CMSMS wins hands down! Really simple to integrate, and features some great modules. My clients seem to like it too :)
June 19th, 2009
Excuse the blog-length comment…but I’ve got some experience with several of the above that I’m happy to share. In a nutshell, I started with Joomla, learned Drupal, moved to WordPress, and even used Cushy CMS. Each has its own advantage.
Joomla is an easy out-of-the-box solution, it has (one of the more) intuitive admin interfaces, superior community support, and a massive selection of 3rd party modules, both free and commercial. The Joomla templates available on the web are very professional – and from a design standpoint this makes Joomla one of the easiest CMS solutions to plug and play.
Drupal on the other hand is both powerful and flexible – create your own content types with custom fields, use the Views module to display that content in virtually any way you wish; however Drupal isn’t exactly your out-of-the-box solution as it can require a ton of customization on both templates and modules to fit your needs. Someone mentioned a steep learning curve – this is very very true, mainly because the admin interface is not very intuitive.
WordPress has slowly become a better CMS and there’s even a plugin for creating custom fields which opens the gate for its expansion into a system useful for more than just blogging. I think one of the best features about WordPress (from the designer/client standpoint) is its ease of use when training your clients to maintain their own pages.
CushyCMS (free version anyhow) is pretty lightweight: add some classes to the div’s you want to make editable. Log in, edit. Save. Done. They recently added XML file support as well. Good for making small edits to small content areas.
I’ve heard some positive reviews for Expression Engine but don’t like the thought of paying additional money for features that should, without question, be included in the core (ahem, search module, pages module?). Open Source CMS options like Drupal and Joomla blow Expression Engine out of the water when it comes to out-of-the-box functionality and free add ons (AFAIK!).
Hope my experience helps to point someone in the right direction.
June 19th, 2009
If you like WordPress, it’s worth a gander at it’s cousin (both a fork of CafeLog) b2evolution.
June 19th, 2009
CoreCMS is very good: http://www.corecms.co.nz
June 19th, 2009
I think the question which needs to be asked here is not just what’s good for the designer, but what’s the most intuitive and easiest for the CLIENT. WP is pretty straightforward, but I’ve had customers completely befuddled by it, much less something like Joomla or Drupal.
June 19th, 2009
Nice article. Good job.
June 20th, 2009
HI, I’m using Joomla! and have tried WordPress both are very good, as your CMS core so you do not need to build the UI from beginning and just use the advantage of these free CMS and build your own extensions and create a better CMS
Do not get me wrong but I think that working hard on your own CMS from scratch it’s just wasting of time, you will never be as good as the community of these CMS
June 20th, 2009
wordpress is the top CMS.. hands down :)
June 20th, 2009
WordPress is better!
June 20th, 2009
As many others have said CMSMS (CMS Made Simple) is one of the best, and is much more powerful than its name suggests.
It’s also worth pointing out that although the Expression Engine Core is free, that is only available for non-commercial or non-profit use so it doesn’t really fit in a list of free CMSs
June 20th, 2009
@Davide Giacobino: WordPress is better! – Why? Depends on what you need, If you need just Bloging then maybe yes, but I can do the same in Joomla!
June 20th, 2009
Typeroom.com, fairly new, great stuff.
June 20th, 2009
Thanks for the shout out! :)
I’ve been running a PHP tip blog over at http://www.EnnuiDesign.com for a while as well, for any aspiring geeks out there.
Thanks again!
June 20th, 2009
dotCMS is 118.0 mb, so big! ;-) , WordPress just 2mb~ and powerfull
June 20th, 2009
I’ve only used Expression Engine but am very happy with it.
To be fair, its not actually free, but it is very easy to pick up, and as someone with no experience in php, or any other programming knowledge, its amazingly flexible and powerful.
I’d love to say I could use something like Joomla (being free to use), but ultimately, the ability to use a vast amount of tags, conditionals, (community developed) modules, and functionaility with nothing but a knowledge of html and css behind me makes Expression Engine perfect.
June 20th, 2009
I can’t believe Textpattern is not on this list!
It’s the only CMS I use, I think its unbelievably powerful and easy to use.
There is such a big community behind it as well, its so easy to find anything you need.
June 20th, 2009
Nice Collection thank you~~
June 21st, 2009
thanks a lot bro
i knew only the first 4,
wanna check other CMSes also :)
June 21st, 2009
CMS Made Simple !!!
June 21st, 2009
Don’t forget ‘CMS Made Simple’ – it’s open source and it’s both simple and has lots of mudules.
June 22nd, 2009
My site is built on Drupal. Click my username “jlbraaten” to see. I agree that there was a steep learning curve.
Also, I’m trying to get my friend to work on a CMS, but he’s a .NET fiend and most of the good ones out there are PHP. Thanks for the mentions of the .NET solutions.
June 22nd, 2009
Don’t forget Umbraco…its .NET, its open source and its great…:)
June 22nd, 2009
Not just CMS and not free, but I hear many good things about Square Space as well. http://www.squarespace.com But more important is the selection procedure based on requirements. What your say on that? Have a good day!
June 22nd, 2009
You guys forgot Dotclear in that list. http://dotclear.org
June 22nd, 2009
Here’s another vote for CMS Made Simple. I’ve used EE, WP, Joomla, none are even close to how easy CMSMS is.
June 22nd, 2009
Typolight is my favorite. It is very clean and structured… and it has a german community :-)
June 23rd, 2009
This list covers most of the CMS, I will advice for Joomla. Joomla is the one which has largest plugins and modules available to add on ur website.
Even though it little big and complex but its worth when you wish lots of features on your website.
June 23rd, 2009
I’m familiar with most of these as well, but for our general client base of publishers, NGOs and other agencies, the TYPO3 CMS fits there more extensive needs. For the lesser complicated sites, WordPress with Thesis is a no brainer.
June 23rd, 2009
i choose Movabletype! :D
Commercial: http://www.movabletype.com (FREE for personal use)
Open Source: http://www.movabletype.org (community support)
June 23rd, 2009
@Srujan Das,
Indeed, where is http://www.textpattern.com? Definately most underrated!
June 23rd, 2009
Great list, made me immediately update my semantic database with the fist 3 from this list.
Will add all the others as well, and of course a link bck to this page is already in the CMS object. http://hologuides.com/CyG/rawO.....0623094358
Will revisit this page for more cms
June 24th, 2009
A couple other Mambo forks that are really well done (probably better than Joomla): MiaCMS and AliroCMS
http://www.miacms.org
http://www.aliro.org
June 24th, 2009
An awesome list, also appreciate the links to cms-tuts -can never get over learning some new code! Must say personally I like WordPress, but some of these look like they could be worth a go!
June 24th, 2009
Hi! I use SPIP. Nice one. Similar to Drupal.
http://www.spip.net/
June 25th, 2009
For clients of web designers, it is important for the CMS to be customizable, yet extremely user-friendly for those who have no experience with programming/design. In the past, I have found SilverStripe to be the most user-friendly, the most customizable, and the most aesthetically appealing. Other CMS like PINT, which is used by various academic institutions is too restrictive while WordPress can be overwhelming with all of the different options and plug-ins.
June 26th, 2009
I believe that Drupal is the best CMS out there…It is very powerful and robust and with all the modules that you can add you can extend its power even more..Customising a drupal site is not that difficult too…Drupal 6 is even more amazing I just cant wait for Drupal 7. My site has also been built using Drupal.. http://pras.net.np
June 27th, 2009
Symfony + CMS = Sympal
http://www.sympalphp.org/
June 27th, 2009
hey, you missed umbraco! :)
standards based (xslt+xml+css), multiple database (including embedded db), easy setup and very scalable …
http://www.umbraco.org
July 6th, 2009
Drupal – one CMS for all your project
July 7th, 2009
WordPress is still the best while Joomla is the first choice for business and e-commerce sites. Thanks for listing these CMS.
July 11th, 2009
You should also have a look at Gyankosh LCMS which can be easily configured to work like a full fledged CMS.
http://www.careermantra.com/le.....system.php
July 13th, 2009
I’m definitely trying WordPress as CMS. I’ve invested a lot of time in using Joomla, but its just too slow once you add all those plug-ins.
July 15th, 2009
Expression Engine is cool, Love WordPress too.
Cushy CMS is great for simple sites.
Have any of you taken a look at:
http://www.zimplit.com/
http://www.getpixie.co.uk/
both v simple to use and they look great!
Thanks for the article Mike.
B
July 21st, 2009
hi i am new to cms and i was looking 4 a good forum and blog where the user can only use on log in 4 both and have other features, i look into joomla it was good, wordpress good but the thing is which is the best or which has the more features and support thx in advance and really great article
July 24th, 2009
Good in-depth review for the CMS beginners who are confused about what to choose.
I personally like wordpress for its simplicity and SEO capabilities provided a very good theme. For more insight into the CMS world read 9 Promising, free and open source CMS reviews
July 24th, 2009
nice research. this is a joomla based site For Latest Jobs check http://theplacement.org
July 30th, 2009
I tried almost every one of these systems and each system is a story for themselves, each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but the best I have WordPress (for smaller sites and blog systems), and Joomla (for commercial sites have a lot of high quality modules) I’m not sure but it seems to me that no one mentioned http://b2evolution.net/, the super multiblog system, developed together in partnership with people who have worked WordPress but later they went different ways
August 1st, 2009
being new to cms myself I have found this article to be a really useful read :) thanks
August 2nd, 2009
cool list, I like working with Joomla and wordpress the most :)
August 3rd, 2009
Hands down – Modx is my CMS of choice! I love WordPress too for quick blog set up, but for CMS, it’s Modx
September 7th, 2009
Most of the CMS I’ve never heard before
Thanks
September 9th, 2009
Thanks for the nice little piece here,
Very informative for us non-techie types.
I am the operations manager for a small advert agency. Most of our work is print grapics, promotional materials, menu’s, etc. We have a team of some very talented CS guys. We want to expand our offering and be able to create websites for our clients. These are small family owned pizza shops, gas stations, dentist offices, etc. who would love a web presence, if it was inexpensive. We have great, decades old relationships with these clients and would love to help them out.
So, what content management system would you suggest for us? One that is open source, easy to use and geared towards promotional marketing. I keep hearing Joomla or Bluenog / Bluenog ICE from our guys. What do you suggest?
Thanks for your time and help,
Ayan
September 11th, 2009
I love using word press!
September 19th, 2009
I love programming web platforms and CMS systems. Beside my full time job developing enterprise level WCMS that multinational organizations use (such as Olympus IMS, Hologic …) I enjoy developing my own minimalistic and absolutely revolutionary CMS written in Mozilla’s XUL.
I am probably too proud and too self confident about my own creations to use other solutions ;-).
September 22nd, 2009
Great thanks for very good article! It was interesting to new some CMS more!
But I can’t to choose what CMS would be good for news web-site, for Internet media? I use Joomla for some years, and we put on it tens articles in a day. The Joomla work with huge number of articles not very good, and many news topics on frontpage make it work slow… What do You think about what CMS to choose?
September 30th, 2009
it didn’t start 2 years back…the first cms i know phpnuke rolled out sometime in 1999. by 2002 most major sites used a php based cms and there were already countless cms’s available including drupal , xoops and most popular at that time postnuke which has now closed down.
it’s funny you havent mentioned xoops …its still my favourite and ezPublish..which for the last 10 or so years has been voted as no 1 cms..ahead of drupal and joomla.
October 20th, 2009
Hi, great post. But what I would love to know are which are best for web designers who don’t want to use pre-defined templates and want to import their own code / designs and layouts into a CMS.
Or even better.. ones which allow me to put their code in the areas of my sites which need to be editable…
Any thoughts would be appreciated :)
October 26th, 2009
Thank you for the list pal. I was looking for a CMS for my new web site (I will try them and see if any of them is better then WordPress)
October 27th, 2009
Looking for a free .NET based CMS. Which is the best one available?
November 8th, 2009
Just want to throw in my vote for Concrete5 — absolutely love it. Super easy, inline editing right on the page… Do check it out. Only downside is many of the modules (“add-ons”) are not free — but, they’re code-reviewed, vetted & approved by the CMS developers, which is good.
Some of these CMS’s I’m familiar with and others I’d never heard of — it’s very exciting how many free and open-source ones are out there now. I hope to give some different ones a try.
A couple that I came across which are not mentioned in any of the comments:
LightCMS:
http://www.speaklight.com/
Konductor:
http://www.konductor.net/
Can’t vouch for them personally, and I stay away from hosted solutions, but might be a good option for some.
November 17th, 2009
I spent some time looking and trying and ended up using tiki
http://www.tikiwiki.org
primarily becasue it was the only one that handled multilingual so well. A welcome surprise that it handles about almost everything else too Wikis / Forums / Blogs / Articles / Image Gallery / Map Server / Link Directory / Bug Tracker / RSS Feeds. Its free open source.
So I’m still using it ove several sites now. Its downside is that its feature set is so huge it can be daunting to set up at first adn a steep learning curve for the unitiated. And off-the-shelf themes are few and mainly ugly (doesn’t touch something like Joomla! for that).
I think they’re trying to improve that side of things now.
November 20th, 2009
i worked with joomla and wordpress. i found wordpress a better and stable tool than joomla, even it doesn’t have so many features…
November 30th, 2009
Hey I have really great online cms for the list! I recently discovered is http://freecms.com I really like it!
December 15th, 2009
I will have to lean more towards Joomla and WordPress. While Joomla can help you create extensive websites it still comes with those nasty tables that can make building a nice site more difficult. With no real way to overide the table HTML without hacking the core files.
On the other hand WordPress has gained my favor since it can be used as a blog and a website CMS not to mention it’s very easy for clients to use. The best feature that I love about wordpress is that is has an extensive CODEX that explains in detail how to use it’s template tags.Not to mention unlimted page templates.
December 27th, 2009
Wow no one mentioned sNews.. amazing:
http://snewscms.com/
December 30th, 2009
Thank you for this wonderful list of free CMS! A great time saver!
January 10th, 2010
Im all for the PHP-NUKE series total free and easy to use
http://www.phpnuke.org
http://www.platinumnuke.com
http://evolution-xtreme.com/
January 12th, 2010
I’m an avid user of CMS since 2002, the 1st CMS I used is EZpublish and there is not many CMS around, I like Joomla a lot, and Im using it in my website now http://www.flashdriveinc.com, but after I read this hmmmm so sweat I will try them all.
Thank you!
January 13th, 2010
I mostly use Joomla, but find it very limited, unless you have money to waste on buying new modules and components. What is the best CMS? Something Simple, Easy, User Friendly, Flexiable, Front End Editing.
January 31st, 2010
What CMS is the best for dating sites?
February 3rd, 2010
hi guys, i am looking for a sort of system that will alow me to do the following
1. alow my users to register for my site
2. alow my registerd users create there own profile from a template
3. alow my registed users to upload a few photos to there profile
4. and have the ability of messageing other users via there profile
thanks for takeing the time to help me on this, i have my own dedicated home web server not running sql at the moment but are looking into this as its the way the web is running
thanks
February 15th, 2010
Amazing! Thanks for such a Good thing. Keep up Good work. :-)
March 11th, 2010
I go with WordPress. I love their plug-ins and they get better all of the time!
March 12th, 2010
Update: I’ve changed my blog over to Squarespace from Drupal (see the comment above) and am loving it very very much. I think the design-centric community would dig it as well.
March 13th, 2010
pulsecms.com
March 14th, 2010
if numbers is based then wordpress is king. joomla and drupal are up there too but it’s not as simplified like wordpress.
March 24th, 2010
How about magento? Its not free but you will find everything you will need when it comes to CMS. You should have mentioned Drupal and Joomla too.
Hope Tahoe
Project Management Template
March 24th, 2010
I’m just learning the joomla cms system. Do you think its easy to make a new theme for it or is this going to be a problem?
March 29th, 2010
I love Joomla and WordPress.
March 29th, 2010
Having built my own CMS I can say there is certainly reason to do it yourself. Going back to free ones is something I am loath to do, but good for peaking at new features / improvements
March 30th, 2010
Guys, there are also other options in the web, I found this very easy and simple, maybe a good idea: http://www.gosimplecms.com Thanks!
April 9th, 2010
Thanks for the article :)
April 13th, 2010
the more cms freee is the ucoz.com
April 24th, 2010
my vote goes to wordpress
http://www.buppy.co.cc
April 26th, 2010
thanks for article… i am starting with joomla, then i will go 4 wordpress and drupal. let us see what impress me.
May 5th, 2010
I recently found a new CMS called PixelPress at http://www.pixelstarstudios.co.....wnload.php.
I downloaded the free pre-release and found it to be incredibly useful. After getting used to it can’t imagine going back to anything else!Anyone else heard of it and what do you reckon?
May 23rd, 2010
Mike, this is a great list! In my opinion it’s just a little confusing because it mixes very potent with basic CMS’s… And I think this Frog CMS project unfortunately us past, didn’t see anything happening with it’s development.
I’ve created a similar list, but with those simple CMS’s, that are easy to use to end users: http://www.the10most.com/code/.....wares.html
May 26th, 2010
thanks bro, pls let me know which is CMS is good for non blog for small business website where we can add lot of video’s and flash
May 27th, 2010
I prefer Juice CMS from Yorkshire. Most people will never have heard of it because its based on the very latest XML XSLT technology. Very similar to Symphony and with features to die for. There is no design that cannot be implemented using Juice CMS. End users love it because of its simple interface and developers love it because of its power.
Check out http://www.juicecloud.co.uk/
June 2nd, 2010
I shout for Concrete 5. Simply the best CMS on the planet. Great for designers, developers and users alike. Check it out.
June 5th, 2010
Hi
Best CMS
” e107 ”
tank you
June 19th, 2010
Rails CMS compared and reviewed.
http://www.railspassion.com/ra.....diant-cms/
June 24th, 2010
Lanius is the best !! I ve compared all CMS’s – old Lanius seems the better thing after Joomla
July 4th, 2010
Expression engine – the level that is of any value for online presence – is not free.
July 12th, 2010
Template CMS 0.9 Features:
- Easy to install, use and update
- Easy administration interface.
- Multilingual interface administration. (English, Russian +)
- Minimum requirements for web hosting (without sqlDB only PHP)
- Keywords and description for each page and for all.
- Easy page editor (WYSIWYG).
- Create a backup of the site.
- Ability to change themes.
- Friendly URLs.
http://templatecms.webdevart.ru/
July 26th, 2010
I used Joomla for 3 sites..But not satisfied with SEO features and now looking for an alternate cms for company website. Anyhow my first joomla site (www.ethio2k.com) using SOBI2 business directory component cannot be changed as it is the only free n best directory component.
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