Open Source Content Management System (CMS)

What's a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't have to.

The decision for choosing a content management system depends on a variety of criteria, depending on the scope of the project. Choosing a CMS can be a long and difficult process, especially since there are a large number of content management systems available.

Whether you are looking to manage content in a large corporation, university, non-profit organization or a small business,an enterprise-level solution that meets your needs.

• Joomla - Open Source CMS
• Drupal - Open Source CMS
• Wordpress - Open Source CMS
• elgg - Open Source Social Networking Engine (CMS) 
• ImpressCMS - Open Source CMS
• FrogCMS - Open Source CMS
• OpenCMS - Open Source CMS
• Typo3 - Open Source CMS
• e107-CMS - Open Source CMS
• Mambo - Open Source CMS 
• SilverStripe - Open Source CMS

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 is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Drupal is open source software maintained and developed by a community of 630,000+ users and developers. It's distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or "GPL"), which means anyone is free to download it and share it with others.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web.

Elgg is an award-winning social networking engine, delivering the building blocks that enable businesses, schools, universities and associations to create their own fully-featured social networks and applications.

Elgg is a leading open source social networking engine which can be used to power your social network.

ImpressCMS is a community developed Content Management System. With this tool maintaining the content of a website becomes as easy as writing a word document. ImpressCMS is the ideal tool for a wide range of users: from business to community users, from large enterprises to people who want a simple, easy to use blogging tool. ImpressCMS is a powerful system that gets outstanding results and it is free!

ImpressCMS can be used for many types of web sites. The system is highly scalable and it can be used for example as an intranet for a company with 20,000 employees as well as for building a simple 5-page website for the promotion of your company. The system is extremely useful for managing online communities because it has the ability to create user groups and assign permissions for managing content to each different group.

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.

Frog requires PHP5, a MySQL database or SQLite 3 with PDO, and a web server (Apache with mod_rewrite is highly recommended). It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3.

OpenCms from Alkacon Software is a professional, easy to use website content management system. OpenCms helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain beautiful websites fast and efficiently.

The fully browser based user interface features configurable editors for structured content with well defined fields. Alternatively, content can be created using an integrated WYSIWYG editor similar to well known office applications. A sophisticated template engine enforces a site-wide corporate layout and W3C standard compliance for all content.

OpenCms is based on Java and XML technology. It can be deployed in an open source environment (e.g. Linux, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL) as well as on commercial components (e.g.  Windows NT, IIS, BEA Weblogic, Oracle).

As true open source software, OpenCms is free of licensing costs.

TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

e107 is a content management system written in PHP and using the popular open source MySQL database system for content storage. It's completely free, totally customizable and in constant development.

e107 includes advanced features for publishing web pages, interactive portals and other website content easily through the integrated secure Administrator Area. It is a good choice for sites serving communities and offering social networking.

Content can be built easily, with no express requirement for technical knowledge in a self-service on line interface. The system provides two editors, a BB Code editor and a WYSIWYG editor (TinyMCE).

Mambo is a full-featured, award-winning content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. It is used all over the world to power government portals, corporate intranets and extranets, ecommerce sites, nonprofit outreach, schools, church, and community sites. Mambo's "power in simplicity" also makes it the CMS of choice for many small businesses and personal sites.

SilverStripe CMS is an open source web content management system used by governments, businesses, and non-profit organisations around the world. It is a power tool for professional web development teams, and web content authors rave about how easy it is to use.

As a platform, SilverStripe CMS is used to build websites, intranets, and web applications. The modern architecture of SilverStripe CMS allows organisations to keep pace with innovation on the web. SilverStripe CMS enables websites and applications to contain stunning design, great content, and compelling interactive and social functions.

Posted in: CMS,Developer Tools,Free CMS,Open Source Content Management Systems