/Culture/ Choose the best free CMS
03/12/2008 | Filed under Discover > Culture
The Content Management System (CMS) has changed the way we manage our websites, but how do you choose the right one for your needs? Andrew Skinner has the lowdown
Maybe you’re just starting out with a blog, or perhaps you already have a site and adding new content page-by-page with your favourite HTML editor is taking more time than it should. It sounds like you need to choose a Content Management System (CMS). Getting the right one when you start out is important because changing direction can be both difficult and time-consuming later on. So how do you choose? Over the following pages we’ll provide a few pointers to help you decide what’s best for your publishing needs.
The first questions to ask yourself are: “Do I actually need a CMS?” and “How often will I update the content on my site?” If you only make a couple of changes monthly, or even over a year, then the answer to the first question is probably no. If, however, you’re looking to create a blog or a site that’s updated frequently, or your content is updated by multiple authors, then the answer is definitely yes. It’s not just the ease of organising and editing content that may prompt you to set up your site this way. By installing a CMS, you get access to services and features such as RSS feeds, SEO-optimised URLs, plug-ins and other tools that can all be integrated easily into your site.
Although there are many different CMSs to choose from, they really fall into three main categories: blogging tools, Tumblelogs and content frameworks. For non-enterprise requirements, there’s no need to spend money purchasing a CMS tool, as they’re usually expensive and offer sites with a small number of contributors very little value. Adobe does offer its Contribute product, which bridges the gap, but on the whole, open source is the way to go because it offers many choices independent of experience or server configuration.
If the language in which your CMS is created is important to you, all types are catered for. There’s WordPress, ExpressionEngine or Joomla! written in PHP, Movable Type written in Perl, DotNetNuke written using the .NET framework and Typo, Mephisto or Radiant on the Rails framework.
Tools of the trade
Blogging tools such as WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger are specially designed CMSs geared towards the needs of single or small groups of content editors, creating relatively small amounts of article-based content – normally arranged in chronological order. Blogging tools have evolved in recent years to become CMSs in their own right, on which many content-rich sites, such as CNN and MTV properties, are based. They often use the notion of pages and posts, where pages represent content-managed pages and posts represent chronologically organised content that can be shown within the pages as specially formatted areas of text. Textpattern offers a huge degree of customisation in this respect, as it’s specifically based around repeating blocks of a predefined structure.
Blogging tools nearly always come out of the box with support for RSS content syndication and are increasingly supporting the MetaWeblog API, which enables you to create and manage your content using third-party desktop applications such as MarsEdit and ecto. Additionally, all blogging tools are evolving to offer rich support for the inclusion of images, video and audio. The latest version of WordPress 2.5, for example, has taken significant steps to make handling media much easier for content creators. Blogger, on the other hand, keeps things simple and focuses mainly on textual content, enabling basic image uploading through the Admin interface and the image-hosting site Picasa. As with most CMSs, blogging tools require a database back-end and the big hitters work with a large number of different types. However, it’s probably safe to say that MySQL is the most widely supported of these. Bloxom is one exception to this and is a slightly ageing, but widely adopted, file-based publishing system.
Tumblelog-based systems enable short, mixed-media posts rather than the longer editorials found on traditional blogging sites. Authors post links, photos, quotes, dialogues and video. Unlike blogs, Tumblelogs are frequently used to share the editor’s creations, discoveries or experiences, while providing little or no commentary, and many systems include Bookmarklets that enable editors to quickly grab and post things that they’ve found online. A good example is the Projectionist site, although new Tumblelogs are cropping up around the web at a pace, and well-known sites such as Maniacal Rage and Sci-FiHi-Fi are converting to the format. Tools such as Tumblr, Soup, Chyrp and Gelato have been growing in popularity, both as hosted and self-install solutions for Tumblelog editors.
Content Management Frameworks such as Expression Engine require a little more work and often have very steep learning curves. These tools tend to be the most flexible and offer many features for web professionals that the more personal products don’t include. They’re designed to be moulded to specific workflows, support complex layouts and multiple blogs, and rarely function in the way you’d like straight out of the box. This is often intimidating for new users, but frameworks such as Drupal have extensive user bases and active communities who are always willing to lend a hand.
Finally, there are several niche CMS solutions available, such as Zen Cart or osCommerce – which focus on ecommerce – or Community Server for managing the content of a social network. If you’re an artist looking to create an online portfolio, then Indexhibit may suit your needs. If you just want to write, try SimpleLog.
Diversity and themes
As you’re sure to have noticed, content-managed sites don’t all look the same. This is because content management systems enable you to change the look and feel of your site by using themes. The building blocks of a theme are HTML and CSS templates that govern how your site will be displayed on the web. They differ slightly from standard HTML and CSS because they include tags specific to the host CMS. These tags are inserted by the theme creator to tell the CMS where to put each piece of the page content – for example, the title of the entry or body copy. You can create your own themes using your knowledge of HTML, CSS and documentation provided by the CMS vendor (for example the WordPress Codex – codex.wordpress.org). For most CMS, however, you can find ready-made themes online and use them out of the box or customise them to suit your needs.
Nearly all CMS systems are designed to be extended (with the exception of hosted solutions) and the main way of doing this is through the use of plug-ins. Popular plug-ins protect your site from comment spam, pull in content from other sites such as Flickr or enable you to display your del.icio.us bookmarks. Others help you submit your content to search engines. They’re installed by adding files to the core CMS and placing specific tags in your Theme templates.
Find your ideal CMS
Now we’ve seen what’s available, which one do you choose? This is a tough question, as there are so many great tools out there, but the choice can be narrowed down by asking some key questions.
First, what type of site are you creating? This may seem obvious now, but sites grow and change over time. You may find, for example, that limiting yourself to a Tumblelog early on may not enable you to post that industry-changing thought piece in six months’ time or – in this era of user-driven content and two-way conversations – you may find you want to accept comments on it from your readers. Tumblr currently doesn’t support this feature and, because it’s hosted, you can’t add it yourself. Additionally, not all CMSs produce standards compliant code. This can be especially true of the hosted options such as Blogger, where standards can fall by the wayside, although community pressure and the existence of expertly crafted themes means that with a bit of care you can still easily create a standards-compliant site.
Second, do you want to host the site yourself? If you’re not comfortable installing the CMS software yourself, you may want to think about choosing a hosted option – they make a perfect home for those starting out. Hosted options tend not to be available for Content Framework-based CMSs, as everyone’s needs are too different to be adequately supported. Three of the best are from Google, in the form of Blogger, TypePad (a hosted version of Movable Type) and WordPress. They all offer good support and any updates to the software are managed for you. Most hosted services will enable editors to point personal domains to their accounts; however, you should check before you take the plunge, as there’s sometimes an extra fee associated with this.
And finally, how flexible do you need to keep the site? With hosted options you inevitably sacrifice a certain degree of flexibility, as the provider needs to ensure the integrity of the service for all. For this reason, we’d recommend looking at self-install software if you want to make heavy use of specialised plug-ins or write your own themes.
If you’re still unsure, the best advice would be to try out a few CMSs before you commit. Look for active communities and formal support options, such as those provided by Six Apart or Expression Engine. Create accounts with the hosted varieties and try uploading some of your content. Even non-hosted systems normally have links to sample installs, where you can see how they work. Most importantly, take your time. Even though migrating between CMS versions is becoming easier as vendors add import/ export options to their products, it’s still a time-consuming task. Installing a CMS yourself can take a while, but most are easy to get up and running – usually just requiring you to edit a configuration file to tell it where to find your database. With things this simple, what are you waiting for?
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Comments
David Jones / 04/12/2008 / 12:02
Hi, there's one more free CMS for ASP.NET - Kentico CMS. They have a free edition for small web sites. You can check it out at www.kentico.com.
Steve Morin / 04/12/2008 / 19:04 / http://www.bggadvertising.com
I have great success working with Wordpress. I set up my own hosting and there are so many plugins that help the job get done. Most of my clients are small businesses, so it is perfect for them. And it is easy for them to learn the administrative functions.
I did work with Joomla at one point and found it very difficult to maneuver around. Joomla just had too many options and I felt it was overkill for what I was doing. I know of a few Joomla developers who swear by it though.
Recently I tried the Movable Type platform, but found it to be more difficult to set up on your own hosting platform.
I would love to see another article on which Social Media platform you think is best. I am playing around with Elgg and have looked at Dolphin recently but am still in the early stages of familiarizing myself with them.
Dallas Peters / 08/12/2008 / 15:47 / http://dallaspetersdesign.com
Wordpress for simple sites. Joomla for ease of setting up modules and navigation that frequently changes throughout the site. Hear that Joomla is on the verge of a major new release as well. Fun!
Jane / 10/12/2008 / 16:28 / http://plone.org/
Plone is one of the few top rated CMSs and unfortunately it isn't mentioned.
While the list of CMSs could go on and on, at least the top ones should be listed.
Cheers,
Jane
E mar / 20/12/2008 / 09:05
Hi,
I haven't had much fun with cms since phpnuke, allthough i don't use it now,
The community was rich in development and tons of amazing modules etc etc,
I feel like im handeling an ecommerce solution when trying to work with the likes of joomla.
Anora McGaha / 18/01/2009 / 19:03 / http://www.clearsightcreativeresources.com
Good article. Wish you had ShareThis, so I could post it easily for others to notice!
Fred / 20/01/2009 / 00:48
Hello,
The best cms with out a doubt in my mind is ocportal. Its got far more features then joomla and is far more customizable not to mention not trying to find a bridge to get it to work with your favorite forum, such as smf, ipb, vb, phpbb and more.
Fletch / 20/01/2009 / 01:17 / http://www.maltap.com/anglo/index.php
Always difficult to whittle down a recommendation for a CMS', to two or three, out of thousands. FREE is a good way to go, and in this instance FREE doesn't necessarily mean 'junk'.
My recommendation, without hesitation, is <a href="http://ocportal.com/start.htm"><b>ocPortal</b></a>;. There are so many reasons for saying so that I'd take up too much space in this comment to list them all, but here are a few points to ponder:
1. It is <s>probably</s> the most secure CMS around, without a doubt.
2. It is eminently customizable straight out of the box.
3. The ocPortal Forums are very active and the developers constantly offer help and advice without a complaint. My record for having a problem resolved is 6 minutes. Beat that!
4. It was once a 'paid'-for' product that has gone open source since the release of version 4.x.x.
What are you waiting for?
Amy / 20/01/2009 / 04:50 / http://otakuplayground.com
In my opinion OCportal is the best cms out there. I have used so many cms's that I lost count how many I have actually tried but all lack the abilities of OCportal. Some cms's have part of the features that ocportal has but not all of them and no other cms that I have used has been as customizable as ocportal.
How many cms's work with almost all the top forum scripts used today? OCportal works with a lot of forum scripts and even comes with it's own.
Lg-design / 20/01/2009 / 13:52 / http://www.vampireitalia.com
Ehi!
Does anybody remeber OcPortal? (http://ocportal.com)
It's the best CMS that I had EVER tested, and now I have almost 5+ web site running this software!
OcPortal rock!
mythus / 21/01/2009 / 15:30 / http://norova.net still under construction
Greetings,
I have used or tried many many CMS'es out in the past from php nuke to the almighty joomla, and even ones like e107 and drupal. However none of them really seemed to give me just what I was looking for. Each one had something I liked and things I didn't like and things that were just missing.
But then I discovered ocPortal. At first look you might think there isn't much to this software. Oh but there is. You can create, detail, change every aspect of the software. Want a completely different look? You have that power. There are no limits to what you can do with it. And talk about forum integration. It's own forum, OCF is fully featured and powerful. But if you don't want to give up your favorite forum guess what, you can use it too as ocPortal has what is called forum drivers that fully integrate your forum, not just bridge. 9 out of 10 your favorite forum is supported. ANd say later you want to use OCF, well ocPortal has forum converters built right in!
ocPortal is more than a CMS or a portal. It give you everything you need and you can use as little or as much of it as you want. And for easy customization, check out it's theme wizard.
SoccerDad / 22/01/2009 / 00:33
I'm going to echo the sentiments mentioned by other posters regarding ocPortal. This package is heads and shoulders above all the the others I've tried (Joomla/Mambo, Xoops, nukes, and Drupal). I no longer require a large list of addons for functionality, I can create my own custom tags, I do not have to download and hunt a bridge for forum integration, no more core changes just to get what should be, IMHO, a given: access control. I strongly urge all reading here to take a peak at ocPortal. After a short learning curve, you will be amazed by the power and flexibility of this package.
Kernos / 24/01/2009 / 17:35
Why there's nothing about OcPortal or even award-winning eZ Publish? Is this a sponsored article, covering only cms'es that paid for being mentioned? Sorry for this insult... but I didn't hear about a couple of CMSes mentioned in this artricle, at all.
...
I hope OcPortal will be noticed soon: it has the greatest numbers of features I've ever seen.
Blogistics / 02/03/2009 / 03:01 / http://www.blogistics.ca
I'm using Joomla and find that it's very much a great system, but there's not much that I have tried other than Joomla.
Rob / 13/03/2009 / 16:47 / http://www.vekta.co.uk
If your new to CMS and looking for something simple to get to grips with then you could consider MODx - http://modxcms.com
It can create search engine friendly URLs and works well if like me, your a designer and need something that supports CSS and current web standards and you can intergrate Javascript librarys like jQuery, Mootools, ExtJS, Prototype, etc.
Skelly / 21/03/2009 / 00:16 / http://www.iatek.com
I like http://demo.portalapp.net -- PortalApp is free, flexible and goes beyond the scope of most CMS systems with extra functionality. Joomla isn't bad, but a little hard to configure it to fit my needs. For simplicity look at WordPress.org
Christie / 15/05/2009 / 21:13
I was greatly surprised to see a recommendation for PortalApp. I haven't tried the .Net version, and with the errors currently being displayed on their site, I never will. My first experiences were in noticing that their site was almost always down, but I was desperate and spent several hundred dollars for a license anyways. Injection attacks, no response, the pain posted to the forums was unending. I could have made a good living as a fee based consultant for this product but decided I didn't want any association with this vendor and their buggy products
Diane / 21/05/2009 / 04:29 / http://www.terapad.com
I like http://www.terapad.com. Its very simple to use with word processing like editor that works for people like me who does not know html! I don't have to hire a web designer to do my website.
Tarun / 01/06/2009 / 13:19
Hi All,
I have seen several java based open CMS projects, installed many on my servers for the demos, and played around with them but 90 % of the CMSs actually are just to make website building easier.
I think that’s not really the literal meaning of a CMS. I am looking for a CMS that is mainly used to manage the content (binaries), have metadata for the content (like tags, attributes) and could segregate content based in categories and probably show previews of images, play audio/video previews.
So in short I am looking for a real CMS where I could
-Upload any binary data
-Associate metadata (attributes) with the content
-Segregate content based on categories
-Index the content and use simple text/phonetic search
-Allows Permissions/workflow for content publishing
I have used opencms that does all but it has few issues. its slow, sometimes data get corrupted while importing/exporting/publishing.
Could any one suggest any other similary open source java based CMS?
Thanks,
Tarun
goodfta / 05/06/2009 / 06:37 / http://www.goodfta.com
I like the cms joombla and the one on http://www.goodfta.com
frank the idiot / 14/08/2009 / 03:34 / http://www.tradeshowdisplaysguide.com
cms? what's that. doesn't frontpage take care of that? what's wrong with frontpage???
seriously though, thanks for delving into the options with cms, something I'm still struggling with!
lne / 10/10/2009 / 19:03
Hi, one of the simplest and lite for sure is http://www.lightneasy.org
Scott / 29/11/2009 / 00:41 / http://scottjarvis.com
Hi guys,
’ve created a CMS that contains a few of these features either as standard, or as a plugin.
An online demo and a free, downloadable version will be available very soon and can be seen at http://scottjarvis.com.
I’d be interested to know how it compares for anyone who is familiar with wordpress or others. Thanks.
Magdalen Green / 06/03/2010 / 23:21
Fascinated by qall the comments here - especially with regard to ocportal (which i am just going to go and try out) I have tried wordpress , joomla and others but found webbaker to be one of the most intuitive
lotsofyorkshire / 13/05/2010 / 20:42
Well I know there are an aweful lot of CMS products out on t'internet, but I think all you techies and even novice users should take a look at a grand Yorkshire product called Juice CMS. The company that produced it are adamant there is no web design that cannot be implemented in Juice. The user interface is brilliantly simple and many not so clued up individuals think this indicates a simple product, but believe me once you dig below the surface its features and capabilities are amazing. Contains a great many enterprise class CMS features. If you dont believe it then follow the links at www.juicecloud.net. Professional Web and Graphic Designers will be especially welcome.
jeremy / 31/05/2010 / 18:39 / http://echealthinsurance.com/
Very tough to pick a cms if you are just finding that Wordpress is not powerful enough to not look like a blog. I have found that Drupal on the other extreme just takes too long to build a site for my businesses, so I am looking for a middle ground. Any suggestions?
Martin / 11/06/2010 / 12:36 / http://www.edicy.com/?ref=start123
I believe the easiest free content management platform is http://www.edicy.com/?ref=start123 - which has "less features" to keep it simple and very nice hand-crafted design templates. I suggest you have a look and give it a try.
Jason / 13/07/2010 / 19:39 / http://www.gravitywavedesign.com
Has anyone here used TypO or Frog? How are they?
