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Best Content Management System

Content Management Systems are becoming a norm in modern websites on the internet today. These CMSs are used to manage content obviously, but they can actually do a lot more! Some CMSs - like Joomla and Wordpress - are able to be extended to function as an e-commerce website.  This article will be about the CMSs and it will have a countdown to the best CMS!

The Ultimate CMS Countdown

5.  DotNetNuke

Cost: FREE (modules are not) | Open Source | License: BSD | Programming Language: ASP| Website: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ | Demo: http://demo.dotnetnuke.com/

Whats Good

DotNetNuke has a huge member base of over 650,000 people so if you ever need support, it wont be hard to get any. This CMS also seems to be the best CMS written in ASP - good if you prefer developing websites using ASP.

Whats Bad

The modules that are made for this CMS are not free, which means that if you don’t want to pay, you wont get much of a site - unless you write your own.

4.  Wordpress

Cost: FREE | Open Source | License: GPL | Programming Language: PHP | Website: http://www.wordpress.org/ | Demo: here

Whats Good

Wordpress is definitely the most popular and successful blogging system (which is a type of CMS), used by about 60 million blogs. Try google “powered by wordpress” and see for yourself! The CMS is also constantly being upgraded with focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability, making it the most good-looking and highly-functional blog system that even an idiot can use! Wordpress also has about 3800 plugins (easily installable) to make your life easier, and its all a blogger needs!

Whats Bad

Its a blogging system, making it limited to blogs naturally. It can be made to work like a normal CMS but with your own coding or plugins (like the e-commerce plugin).

3. LifeRay

Cost: FREE | Open Source | License: MIT| Programming Language: Java, PHP, Ruby | Website: http://www.liferay.com | Demo: http://demo.liferay.net/

Whats Good

LifeRay has a great online community that is quite active, and there is commercial support for it in case you need help. This is a great CMS portal aimed at businesses mainly, which is where they get their main source of income. There is a total of over 150 plugins offered by the LifeRay team and the community itself. The main feature of this CMS is the ease of use, and the dynamic drag & drop (you ahve to try it!). It is also localized in 22 languages and quite well designed.

Whats Bad

The CMS is not well known because it is aimed at the business community- which makes it have less of a general community to develop non-business features of the CMS.

2.  Joomla

Cost: FREE (except some extensions) | Open Source | License: GPL | Programming Language: PHP | Website: http://www.joomla.org/ | Demo: http://demo.joomla.org/

Whats Good

Joomla is popular for its large community of about 200,000 people and the availability of many extensions (there are over 4200 extensions!). Because of the number of extensions, Joomla can be used to rapidly create simple to moderately-advanced websites with absolutely no knowledge of PHP.  Other than that, Joomla is also great because of the number of free (and decent) templates available. There are over 1500 templates on www.joomla24.com, a free-templates directory for Joomla.  Joomla is simply the easiest CMS to use, with coding as something optional, with all those extensions.

Whats Bad

Not everything is free in Joomla - some extensions/templates require subscription or purchase. Some terminology can be confusing in Joomla, such as ‘categories’ and ’sections’ of the , or ‘plugins’, ‘modules’ and ‘components’. The average person wouldnt know the difference between the groups! The point is, Joomla requires a slight learning curve to understand.

1.  Drupal

Cost: FREE | Open Source | License: GPL | Programming Language: PHP | Website: http://www.drupal.org/ | Demo: here

Whats Good

Drupal is a very extendable CMS, and it is able to function as any kind of website. There over 2000 modules to download and use, and a few theme engines to display pages differently.  Drupal is a great all-round CMS that can be transformed into any type of website you need - ally ou need is PHP knowledge!

Whats Bad

Templates can be hard to find, and there are very little free and decent templates available for use.  Drupal requires at least some knowledge in PHP to use in most cases, making it not very user friendly (compared to Joomla/Wordpress) when it comes to making your own website.  Drupal has a relatively bigger learning curve (compared to Joomla).

Some Other CMSs Worth Mentioning

• Plone CMS
• CMS Made Simple
• MediaWiki
• Typo3
• Pligg
• MovableType

More Resources

This is a list of resources if you need to compare more CMSs

• A list of Open Source CMSs with ratings
• Article - How To Choose a CMS

Conclusion

Well, even if these are the best CMSs around, they might not be the best for you. Depending on what you need, you should choose a suitable CMS for it. Below is a list that will conclude the best CMS for different needs.

CMSs and their best strengths

• Joomla - Recommended for websites that need quick development
• Drupal - Recommended for websites that are very complex and requires a flexible CMS for development.
• LifeRay - Recommended for business websites, because of the community and support services already available.
• DotNetNuke - Recommended if you want to develop a website using ASP
• Wordpress - Recommended for bloggers

Well, that’s it! I hope you liked the article (its the first article on DesignBlab!)

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