What is content management system (CMS)?
Content management system is software that helps you keep track of each and every piece of your content on the website, as if you are using a local public library of books and manage them. The content on your website can be anything like simple text, documents, photos, music, videos or any other thing you can think off. The best part of CMS is that it requires almost no technical knowledge or skill to manage and maintain it, everything about your content is managed by CMS.
Website building has become much more easier with the availability of many content management systems. You do not have to struggle much with html/css coding for webpages. In this article you will find 12 best content management systems that have made web developers and website publishers job much easier.
Although there are many content management systems (CMS), but many of them are excessively complicated and require greater level of technical knowledge. Some of them are very simple, easy to use and also give the flexibility to customize the website. So in this article let use look at some of the best content management systems.
Wordpress
WordPress is a content management software that you can use it to create a beautiful website or blog. WordPress is free, but the kind of features and ease of utilization are priceless.
This software is build by the community of hundreds of volunteers, and if you decide to use this cms software you will find thousands of plugins and themes available that can transform your site into amazingly anything you imagine. There are over 60 million people who are using WordPress CMS to power their website. Visit WordPress website to download and use it. Most of the web hosting service provide easy installation of WordPress.
Drupal
Using Drupal will help you build any type of website from personal blogs to enterprise applications. You find thousands of add-on modules and themes that will let you build any type of site you can imagine. Drupal can be used to build advanced database management website for this little technical knowledge is required.
Drupal is built and supported by active and diverse community of people from around the world. It is an open source content management platform that is used by millions of websites and applications. Most of the web hosting services provide easy installation of Drupal.
Joomla
Joomla is a award winning content management system, it helps you build websites and also powerful online applications. Installing and setting up of Joomla is very easy and you do not have to be a advance user. Joomla is a open source content management solution that is available freely for everyone. Many web-hosting service provide one click installation of Joomla, it has many aspects like ease of use, extensibility that have made it so popular.
SilverStripe CMS
SilverStripe CMS is a platform that is used for building websites, intranets, and other web applications. Most of the government, businesses and non profit organizations are using this CMS system. SilverStripe CMS is immensely flexible and easy to customize also provides fundamental security models, caching, workflow and multiple language. SilverStripe CMS is open source, contains powerful php5 based programming framework, it is underpinned by public documentation, free code, and a developer community.
Frog CMS
Frog CMS offers flexible templating system, elegant user interface, simple user management and permissions, also it provides tools necessary for content management. Frog CMS is based on well known Ruby on Rails application. Frog CMS requires PHP5, web-server with Apache mod_rewrite and with MySQL database or Sq-lite 3 with PDO. Frog CMS does not require you to learn another scripting language because it has simple templating code and directly uses PHP.
CushyCMS
CushyCMS is free content management system that's light weight, fast and simple. The main aim of Cushy CMS to to make life easier for the web designers by simplifying content management. This CMS gives clients access and ability to change content of specific number of pages without effecting everything else. With few css classes you can define editable areas of your pages. No server requirement and no programming required, you don't even have to train your clients. Just provide FTP details and you are done.
MODX
MODX is one of the best platform for out of the box Ajax enhanced,accessible XHTML/CSS sites. Building CSS based sites is easy with MODX,also you will be easily be able to create custom applications. You don't have to learn any complex template systems and it provides good API. It is believed that its next release will be more simple and flexible. MODX is like a blank canvas for web-designer's creative vision. You can power your responsive HTML5 websites to mobile CMS for native Android or iOS apps or any mobile platform that comes in future.
dotCMS
dotCMS Web Content Management (WCM) has been build with the philosophy that creating and managing enterprise websites should not be difficult. You can easily integrate complex J2ee development stacks. It's use will also reduce the work time, for processes where others CMS take weeks dotCMS system takes only days. It helps in developing engaging, responsive, multi-channel content to drive your online business. dotCMS will provide you the ability to respond any IT business in days not weeks and all this is because of its support for light weight web scripting, web services and comprehensive APIs.
Contao
Contao CMS is for people who want professional presence with easy maintain software. Contao CMS provides high security standards and also allow you to develop search engine friendly websites. Even people with disabilities can use this application. Contao is now one of most popular open source content management system because of its ease of managing user rights, mordren CSS framwork, Live update servise and many ready to integrate modules like news, calender, forms, etc. You can choose from hundreds of additional modules and extensions can be installed with push of a button.
ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine is a powerful Content Delivery Platform. It is a agile open source framework and CodeIgniter. With ExpressionEngine a web-professionals can build their dream website or applications. Thousands of people use EllisLab software to build their applications, sites and business. It provides you with an ability to design template files in house and also manage multiple authors.
concrete5
With concrete5 you will be able to start simple content site and easily turn it into intranet or extra-net. You will be able to freely use the most active community. Concrete5 is completely free to use as it is open source content management system, its marketplace provides add-ons and themes, it has plenty free and commercial add-ons. If you have any major enterprise requirement than even core team may be ready to help you, has good support system.
Which Content Management System To Choose
So after going through the 12 best content management systems, now the question is which one to choose. Many will settle down with Wordpress or Drupal or Joomla because of their massive popularity and add-on availability, but unless you don't try other CMS how will you know if any of the other CMS would have suited your needs. So if you are web developer my suggestion would be to explore other CMS so that you can provide better service to your client. But if you intent to quickly setup and make money than better go for Wordpress.
What Goes Into Content Management System Software?
Expression Engine, eZ Publish and Vivvo CMS are our top-ranked systems. Not only did these systems consistently finish at the top of our side-by-side comparisons, but in many cases the gap between these and the rest is significant. Begin here by narrowing the field based on your most-needed features. From there, move to a test phase and spend time on the demos. In the end, it will be up to you to determine the best CMS is for your specific project and skill set. Every potential user is searching for a unique set of features, however.
Built-in Features
These are the features and functionality that are standard with each CMS. Each content management system offers a standard series of features through which users can ultimately gain their footing and become comfortable using the application. Still, it is but a framework to greater and grander things. The framework comprising a CMS is not typically enough to create a full end product, and add-on features are necessary to improve the versatility of your website.
Add-on Features
The main defining feature of most CMS applications is the ability to extend the original framework into a more comprehensive web solution. Developer communities flock around Open Source software and create a flurry of new capabilities for content management systems. Most community developers do this for free, but some sell their extensions as add-ons to the CMS for a nominal fee. Add-ons are helpful little additions to a CMS that enable you to make use of new software to improve your website’s offerings to visitors. Whether it is enabling your site to show social media feeds or adding eCommerce capabilities to your storefront, add-ons are a boon to be utilized.
Management
On our side-by-side matrix, management of the users, design and content assets within a CMS are all reviewed here. These management features describe the inherent or pluggable way the systems organize, schedule and deploy the information they contain. Advertising management, asset management, clipboard, content scheduling, content staging, inline administration, package deployment, sub sites/roots, themes/skins, trash, web stats, a web-based template manager, a web-based translation manager and a workflow engine are all standards by which this category measures the products in our lineup.
Security
Security is a no-brainer on the web. If you want a CMS that your employees, customers and clients can trust, you could need a variety of security measures, many of which are reviewed here. Audit trail, Captcha, content approval, email verification, several different types of authentication protocols, login history, a sandbox, session management and SSL compatibility (logins and pages) are many features you might want in a CMS. Some of these content management system software applications build these features into the main offering, while others offer them as free plugins or for a small fee.
Ease of Use
When shopping for a CMS, whether you are a blogger, developer or designer, ease of use is probably the most desirable feature, second only to the actual publishing and performance components. If you aren’t able to immediately pick up a software application and start building your site, odds are it isn’t entirely user friendly. A CMS should enable both technical and non-technical users to create a truly comprehensive web presence with ease.
Help & Support
Support is another vital component of Open Source content management system software. Since the core and component code is updated and changed often, user forums, skeletons and comprehensible online documentation has to be readily available as an ongoing guidebook. Community forums also play a strong role in the support and continual progression of a CMS application.
Content creation, content management, publishing and presentation are the four main categories of CMS functionality. Here are just a few benefits your online business can gain by implementing a CMS:
- Reduce the cost of site maintenance
- Streamline the authoring process
- Increase security
- Greater consistency
- Reduce information duplication
- Improve site navigation
- Quick turnaround time for new pages and changes to your site
- Increase site flexibility
- Support remote authoring
- Increase growth capacity
Our trademark side-by-side comparison can only compare the types of features offered by each CMS, but it doesn’t really address the power or usability of those features. It is in this way that each of these systems distinguishes itself from another. Ratings and check marks fail to really capture the full worth of any CMS; only each specific user can determine which is the “best” CMS. Every one of the systems reviewed here has a demo version that gives a more accurate picture of its capabilities.
You might choose to explore these aspects individually by first reading our articles related to content management system software, or you can view them all on our side-by-side comparison of content management system software. Either way, let this site be a starting point to discovering the CMS of your dreams and how to make it work for you. Whatever system you choose, there are many online resources to aid you with installation, set up and use, and everything we've reviewed here offers a demonstration product so you can get a feel for it by actually using the system before you commit all your content and assets.
