The 10 most powerful FREE Content Management Systems
A Content Management System is a great tool to easily update your site or blog and keep the readers interested and coming back to read more. We have already posted an article about the The 10 Most User Friendly Non Hosted CMS’s were we brought up some very good and easy content management systems that you can easily install and use on your server. But this post is different.
Here we focused on power, not usability. Below you will see a list of The 10 most powerful (and FREE) Content Management Systems with which you will be able to create stunning websites or even portals with many advanced features such as “user login and password protected pages”, “news management”, “e-commerce modules”, “blog posts” and many other options/modules available for each of those great systems – without having to code everything from scratch!
Check them out and comment if you have something else to share! To preview most of those CMS’s, click here.
1. WordPress
WordPress, formerly known as “the king of the blog platforms“, has become much more than that! The just launched version 3.0 means a great improvement on how the system handles pages and menus, and is now officially meant to also be a great CMS!
The coolest thing about WordPress is that you can easily tweak its functions.php file and create a customizable backend Options Panel and many other custom tweaks to make it work exactly the way you want!
Take a look at their showcase and see for yourself what is possible using WordPress!
Technology: PHP + MySQL
Backend Usability: 5/5
Learning Curve: Flat
Video: “How to use WordPress, a Quick Overview”:
2. Drupal
Drupal is one of the most used CMS’s here in the US and has a thriving community, which puts it in second of our list.
The best showcase for a Drupal project is the US White House Website, completely rebuilt in Drupal when the Obama Administration came into office, represented a huge step for the open source community. Read this article written by Dries Buytart noting this.
Drupal can be extended to almost anything you want and need. You can create community websites with it, e-commerce stores, blogs, magazines or just plain company or family websites. Its extensive module library – fed by its community – counts on thousands and thousands of ready to use modules that you can simply download and use on your own website, that is was actually makes Drupal so powerful!
Technology: PHP + MySQL
Backend Usability: 2/5
Learning Curve: Moderate
View a very detailed video about Drupal:
3. Joomla
Joomla is another Open Source Content Management System backed up by a huge community and an extensive list of great modules. This CMS has quite a learning curve and it gets somehow confusing on its content organization, but once you get used to it the possibilities are close to endless on what you can achieve with Joomla!
Technology: PHP + MySQL
Difficulty: 3/5
Learing Curve: Moderate
Video: “Understanding how Joomla works”:
4. Movable Type
Movable Type is a CMS solution backed up by Six Apart that has become Open Source in 2007, but also offers a Pro Version. It is a harder CMS to learn from scratch and installation with all the cgi-bin scripts is hard for someone with limited server knowledge.
On the other hand, Movable Tpye is a very solid and secure system, that also offers many intresting plugins built by its community!
Technology: PERL/CGI + MySQL
Backend Usability: 2/5
Learing Curve: Steep
This video is rather old (2008) but gives you an idea of what MT is:
5. Typo3
You don’t hear much about Typo3 here in the US, but this German (or Danish – not clear) CMS is one of the greatest systems in Europe, used by millions of websites worldwide and especially in European Countries.
Founded in the 90s by Kasper Korner, Typo3 can be compared to Drupal when it comes to community size and Extension download options and has a thriving community of people engaged and committed to the further development of this great CMS.
Typo3 uses it’s own internal language called Typoscript, with which you can do almost anything using the CMS. Since it has a quite steep learning curve, Typo3 remains a mystery for many although quite a lot of real programmers love it.
Technology: PHP + MySQL
Backend Usability: 1/5 (very hard to get used to it)
Learing Curve: Very Steep
6. Contao Open Source CMS (fka TypoLight)
Contao’s CMS logic (formerly known as TypoLight) resembles a lot Typo3 and actually is claimed to be a lighter version of Typo3, but built from scratch and easier to learn and use.
Excerpt from their website: “Contao is an open source content management system (CMS) for people who want a professional internet presence that is easy to maintain. The state-of-the-art structure of the system offers a high security standard and allows you to develop search engine friendly websites that are also accessible for people with disabilities.
Furthermore, the system can be expanded flexibly and inexpensively. Easy management of user rights, the Live Update Service, the modern CSS framework and many already integrated modules (news, calendar, forms, etc.) have quickly made Contao one of the most popular open source content management systems on the market.”
Technology: PHP + MySQL
Backend Usability: 3/5 (a lot easier than Typo3)
Learning Curve: Moderate
Video “Introduction to TypoLight”:
7. Radiant CMS
Radiant CMS looks simple at first glance, but is a quite powerful and versatile content management. It currently offers 200+ plugins to extend its core functionalities and is written on Ruby on Rails, thus making it simple to grow the application if and when needed. (FrogCMS is the PHP version of this CMS)
From their website: “Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams. It is similar to Textpattern or MovableType, but is a general purpose content management system (not just a blogging engine).”
Technology: Ruby on Rails + MySQL
Backend Usability: 4/5
Learning Curve: Moderate (easy to install, but RoR makes it a little harder to get used to)
Introduction to Radiant CMS:
8. Tomato CMS
One of the few CMS’s that are built with the powerful object oriented Zend Framework, Tomato CMS stands out using modern techniques such as jQuery and the 960Grid CSS Framework.
TomatoCMS supports modular architecture. Each module has separated permission sets, features and language data. The independence of modules makes developing modules easier and less time consuming.
Technology: PHP (Zend) + MySQL
Backend Usability: 2/5 (very cluttered, too many options)
Difficulty: 4/5 (cluttered and there’s the Zend
9. Plone
Active since 2001, Plone is Python based CMS available in more than 40 languages with an active community and 3800+ plugins to extend this CMS to your needs!
From their website: “Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain information using only a web browser. Perfect for web sites or intranets, Plone offers superior security without sacrificing extensibility or ease of use.”
Technology: Python+ MySQL
Backend Usability: 3/5
Difficulty: 4/5 (Python makes it rather unique)
10. ModX
ModX is a very nice PHP Content Management System that focuses on Ajax and SEO. It’s installation goes smoothly and the backend usability is quite straight forward.
From their website: “MODx helps you take control of your online content. An Open Source Content Management 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 HTML/CSS/JS (any lib you want). Registered user systems and a killer community. Welcome to web-building nirvana.”
Technology: PHP+ MySQL
Backend Usability: 4/5
Difficulty: 2/5
Video “ModX Overview (rather old video, but you get the idea)”:
Got something to share? Go ahead and comment!
Related Posts
this is very helpful. thanks for it
A well documented list, thanks for sharing. May I ask where Textpattern is though? It has to be one of the greatest, most flexible open source CMS systems for web designers!
Hi there Milton! TextPattern is a great CMS, but still basic when compared to Drupal, Joomla, Typo3 and other CMS’s featured in this article, where we actually listed the “Most Powerfull CMS’s”. Yet, it was featured in this article: http://www.the10most.com/code/the-10-most-end-user-friendly-non-hosted-free-cms-softwares.html
MODx is actually the easiest if you get the idea how it works – you just put plain HTML into template and that’s it. Then you can start making it dynamic step-by-step. Once you use it – you’ll love it;)