10 Promising Content Management Systems
When it comes to content management systems (CMS) and publishing platforms, there are plenty to choose from. They vary in technologies used, organization structure, performance, and license. You’ve probably heard of popular content management systems such as Drupal, WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla!, and Textpattern, but if you want to try a platform that’s a little less main stream – check out these excellent alternatives.
In this article, you’ll find 10 terrific content management systems that may not garner as much attention as their more popular counterparts - but should.
There’s a large amount of content management systems out there, so if your favorite isn’t on here, share it with us in the comments.
ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine is a powerful and easy-to-use content management system. ExpressionEngine is known for its flexibility and intuitive Template Engine that lets developers easily mold the CMS into its intended use. It has a built-in caching feature that significantly reduces server load (helpful in times of high traffic). Check out the Showcase section on EE’s website to see live sites that use ExpressionEngine.
Concrete5
Concrete5 is a solid content management system that’s a breeze to use. You can edit a web page live by entering "edit mode", which makes the regions and elements on the web page you are viewing editable. It has a very robust administration panel with a built-in system for gathering statistics so you don’t need to install a plugin/extension or use a third party application like Google Analytics to monitor your site traffic.
Radiant CMS
Radiant CMS focuses itself for use in small teams. It’s designed as a simple and elegant CMS akin to 37 Signals applications, holding out on complicated and unnecessary features to provide users a straightforward interface for creating and editing website content.
CushyCMS
CushyCMS is a "plug-and-play" content management system that doesn’t require you to install anything to get it working, which can greatly reduce your maintenance cost and development time. With CushyCMS, you define which areas are editable, making it a safe option to your not-very-tech-savvy clients. CushyCMS is currently being used by about 10,000 websites and is gaining popularity as a no-hassle, user-friendly CMS.
Symphony
Symphony, created by Overture, is a CMS designed for developers, utilizing XSLT to provide developers flexibility in customizing Symphony. If you don’t know much about XSLT, Overture provides a large number of tutorials and screencasts on their resource center. With that said, Symphony isn’t for everybody and those looking for a content management system that requires little technical expertise should probably consider another option.
MODx
MODx is both a content management system and a PHP web application framework. MODx puts a high emphasize on web standards, allowing you to build XHTML 1.1 strict compliant websites easily. It comes with a build-in CSS menu builder for hassle-free site navigation development. For less-experienced users, MODx comes with a graphical user interface installer so you can get up and running quickly.
Plone CMS
Plone CMS is a feature-packed content management system built on the Zope web application framework. It’s supported by a large and active developer community so you won’t have any trouble finding help. Plone has extensive documentation in a wiki format to help you get started and help you take advantage of its more advanced features.
Railfrog
Railfrog is one of the few CMS’s built on top of the Ruby On Rails web application framework (the same technology powering popular web applications such as Twitter and Basecamp). To help you get started on Railfrog, check out its Developer Portal where you’ll find guides that you can follow to get rolling.
TYPO3 CMS
TYPO3 is an open-source, enterprise-level content management system focused on providing companies a solution for websites and their intranet. While many CMS’s try to be simple and basic, TYPO3 provides users complex and powerful features to help you achieve complicated tasks and ability to integrate with other applications.
SilverStripe
SilverStripe is a PHP-based, open-source content management system. It uses the MVC coding framework to offer developers great flexibility and potential for scalability. Check out the live demo on their site to see a basic installation of SilverStripe as well as to take a peak at how the administration system looks like.
Content Management System Resources
- The CMS Matrix - A Tool for comparing Content Management Systems.
- CMS Watch - A news portal for Content Management Systems.
- CMS Toolbox: 80+ Open Source Content Management Systems
- CMS Report - A website that reports on Content Management Sytems.
- How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and Twitter
Related Articles
- CMS Showcase: 31 Remarkable Drupal Powered Websites
- 10 Promising JavaScript Frameworks
- 15 helpful WordPress plugins for the savvy user
- 6 Tools to Help You Analyze a Web Host
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155 Comments
CreamScoop
November 6th, 2008
EE and WP, you don’t need anything else.
Umut
November 6th, 2008
Great list.
Used SilverStripe & ExpressionEngine. Both are perfect.
Concrete5 is my latest favorite as it is totally different.
foobarph
November 6th, 2008
how about CMS Made Simple (http://cmsmadesimple.org)?
I think they are promising to join the higher ranks as well. :D
binocle
November 6th, 2008
Expression Engine is awesome. I used it for the redesign of our portfolio http://www.binocle.ch and I never built a site so quickly.
Karl
November 6th, 2008
I haven’t had the chance to test any big amounts of CMSs, what would be a good and easy choice for a starter. Since Rails could be interesting to get into, Radiant looks like a worthy choice…
Any other opinions?
Pete
November 6th, 2008
I use Pure SEOCMS on my site as it is also a site builder and am happy with it.
girly
November 6th, 2008
I like the new website builder called Zimplit, it´s free and easy with online editor and great choice of templates.http://www.zimplit.org
alainsuline
November 6th, 2008
I use Typo and symphony, its simple and easy!
styletime
November 6th, 2008
off from WP to EE myself so will let you know how it goes ;)
Stu Smith
November 6th, 2008
This is a bit of a plug, apologies in advance…
We’re currently beta’ing our site editing system, and we’re looking for feedback:
http://www.easyas123web.com
Any feedback, positive or negative, would be gratefully appreciated!
Mucha
November 6th, 2008
Plone CMS is not so new. So … i isn’t so promising ? ;P
mkjones
November 6th, 2008
You forgot Umbraco (www.umbraco.org).
Open Source ASP.Net and pretty decent too.
Atle Mo
November 6th, 2008
I´d like to see Squarespace on this list. It´s in a class of it´s own I´d say. Check it out at http://www.squarespace.com
Jacob Gube
November 6th, 2008
Hi everyone,
Thanks for sharing your other CMS suggestions, keep them coming!
@Karl: That’s a seemingly simple question with a potentially complex answer. In short, it really depends on what you’re trying to do, what you have in terms of server technologies, what scripting languages you already know (so that you can leverage that skill), and who will use the content management system. For example, if you want to run a blog and you already know PHP - I would look at WordPress. If you wanted to run a RoR-based application (because you already know RoR or you’re seriously wanting to learn), I’d check out Railsfrog. If you’re building a CMS for a client that isn’t “tech-savvy” and is barely able to write an email, I would go with a CMS that has a user-friendly rich text editor like Concrete5, or CushyCMS if you don’t want to maintain their application (i.e. upgrading, troubleshooting, reinstalling), but I wouldn’t recommend Drupal (I’ve had numerous complaints about the administration panel’s complexity with Drupal-powered sites I’ve deployed or been a part of). Everything has its ups and downs, pro’s and con’s - in the end, you pick one that suits your needs the best. There’s a ton of options, you’re not limited to WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla (although these are great CMS’s and I personally love working with the first two). Check out The CMS Matrix to compare between different CMS’s.
@Stu Smith: I’m not opposed to helping application developers seek beta testers and plug their up and coming apps in the comments - as long as it’s appropriate to the subject and not spammy. If anyone’s interested in helping out Stu for EasyAs123Web, check out the site he linked to.
@styletime: Yeah, please keep us posted on the Wordpress -> ExpressionEngine migration. I’m going to play around with the free, personal license just to see how smoothly it goes. I’ve heard a lot of positive things about EE.
Thanks everyone.
Online hry zdarma
November 6th, 2008
Symphony CMS looks good. Thanks for tip.
TrevorLee
November 6th, 2008
no drupal ? sheesh
Ross Johnson
November 6th, 2008
I have tried tons of CMS options looking for something that was flexible enough for large sites and scalable enough for small sites, and silverstripe has blown everything out of the water.
WP/EE/Textpattern all seemed to “blog focused” and were not intuitive for many clients.
Drupal / Joomla / Mambo were all to bloated and complicated, also confusing for clients.
Silverstripe fits right in the middle, but is still capable of everything that the other CMS’ can do.
Lawk Salih
November 6th, 2008
PhpNuke?
Brian
November 6th, 2008
EE is nice but, if want a free CMS with unlimited flexibility, try MODx. It is a CMS built with a framework. Very easy to make a “module” do what you want.
Gary Horsman
November 6th, 2008
I’m personally a fan of Textpattern. It’s lightweight, feature-rich and is a very easy transition if you already have a foundation in XHTML and CSS.
I’m still waiting for ExpressionEngine to launch version 2 with an asset management system. Also, the full version costs $250, so I’m hesitating before going full hog.
Ian Tearle
November 6th, 2008
Dreamscape CMS, I have been using it for years, since it was called Expanse CMS, Nate who is now working for Liferay developed it. The new now Open source development can be found at http://dreamscapecms.com/
Mathias
November 6th, 2008
Typo3 seems to be a big hit here in Germany, though I cannot understand what the fuss is all about. I’ll stick to Drupal and WP (and probably EE, which I’ll be trying in the next project.)
frz
November 6th, 2008
Ross, you should check out c5 as well then: http://concrete5.org
We built it from the bottom up to be a great framework for developers to dream up any idea with, but still deliver simple to edit sites to the end owners who have to deal with them for years. It’s also completely free and open source, which some of the others listed here are not. There’s some screencasts and a demo at http://concrete5.org
I’d be happy to answer any questions.
-frz
ceo, c5
Alex Aguilar
November 6th, 2008
>> Silverstripe fits right in the middle, but is still capable of everything that the other CMS’ can do.
Another vote for SilverStripe.
Andrew
November 6th, 2008
MovableType
8ii8
November 6th, 2008
I would have to also vote for cms made simple. It is ridiculously easy to implement, all you really need to know is html/css since it uses very simply smarty tags to display content. Perfect for small-mid size site management.
John
November 6th, 2008
I love http://CMSMadeSimple.org because it is flexible, scalable, and solid. Working with Smarty php is easy. The only thing that is lacking is participation in their user forums. The developers hang out on the CMS IRC channel, but many CMSMS users would rather use the forum.
dan
November 6th, 2008
and by “content management system” you mean “web content management system”
Ross Johnson
November 6th, 2008
Thanks for the tip FRZ, I will check it out.
Nik
November 6th, 2008
I would call for CMS Made Simple. It’s quite nice and flexible CMS
Keith
November 6th, 2008
Does anyone have any thoughts on businesscatalyst.com?
Adam
November 6th, 2008
http://www.edicy.com rocks.
dfletcher
November 6th, 2008
The thing about the complexity of Drupal - you can hide that from the people who use / administer your site, if you know what you’re doing when you set it up. There is absolutely no reason to give your authors a way to mess with modules, themes, etc. Set everything up for them in advance, giving people only menu items that they can handle. You can do this with Drupal’s permission system.
Great things about Drupal:
1) Theming - take a look at http://www.splendora.com … does it even look like a CMS based site? didn’t think so ;-) You can customize just about every single piece of HTML that comes out of Drupal core or third party modules that you install. Speaking of themes, the built in theme “Garland” is so good that WordPress STOLE it.
2) Modules - Drupal has so many extensions it’s not even funny. Great bedtime reading: http://drupal.org/project/Modules/name
3) Inline admin. Wordpress based sites now feel SUPER clumsy to me. I *love* having the admin stuff right inside my site. My authors love this too.
4) A KILLER API. I know it only matters to programmers. But since I am one, this is nice. Thinking about writing sites in raw PHP again gives me the willies, the support from Drupal makes that so painful.
Marc
November 6th, 2008
I prefer WordPerfect 5.1. Still rocking!!! I especially like the “under water” feature
Fred
November 6th, 2008
You know, it still amazes me that the general community has not caught on to the CMS that I have been exclusively using since February of 2007 - TYPOlight. This system (depsite its unfortunate similarity to the TYPO3 namesake) is the LGPL near-twin to Expression Engine and actually is BETTER than EE in many ways. I have made a living developing for TYPOlight. The United States CMS market has been completely oblivious to it and still seems to be, but I can unequivocally say it is awesome on so many levels, and its MVC PHP5 Framework is a dream to develop with.
Every single person I have let know about it and has decided to use it has not looked back, and that is not an exaggeration.
Check it out! http://www.typolight.org
kracker
November 6th, 2008
What about eZ Publish? eZ Publish 4 delivers on it’s promises!
http://ez.no/ezpublish
http://ez.no
Cheers,
//kracker
Kennedy
November 6th, 2008
I can testify that MODx is fantastic! The web company who built my site used it and its the interface I use to manage the content, add pages images and even files with like no knowledge of webby stuff. If you want to have a look at a site runnin on MODx click my name i think its linked to my site. Really love it and it kicks the pants of Wordpress for versatility!
Vivekanand
November 6th, 2008
Awesome list, thanks for sharing such a great and useful stuff. I appreciate your effort on this one. :)
Vivek
[http://www.developersnippets.com]
chris
November 6th, 2008
cms made simple!
CMS Made Simple
November 6th, 2008
CMS Made Simple is not even close to acceptable as a viable CMS. The code is a mess, there is no framework to it and I’ve spent hours doing what should take minutes because the code is trash. Sorry, that’s my experience with it.
Robert
November 6th, 2008
You missed TangoCMS off the list! http://tangocms.org/
Kevin Harder
November 6th, 2008
Graffiti CMS (http://graffiticms.com) is a simple but powerful CMS solution.
Telligent, the makers of Community Server, are behind it. Works great for a single blog or a large content site. It’s written using ASP.NET, and works with a variety of databases - MySQL, Vista DB, SQL Server, etc.
Chuck Reynolds
November 6th, 2008
somebody actually said nuke? hahaha
WP and EE for me - should be all you ever really need. I have paid a little attention to Silverstripe but haven’t had the chance to actually implement it yet, I may try it.
The best thing about WordPress and Expression Engine is the community behind them. HUGE - so much support and plugins and hacks and help if you need to write your own hack/plugin. Not sure any of these other CMS’s have that behind them.
Radiant looks cool but not a big fan of textile and I’m not a ruby developer so more advanced hacking may not be available to me. Does look really nice tho.
Cushy is pretty cool in that you just add a class to what you want editable and the 3rd party site picks it up to edit for your client. Been a little reluctant to use that because if Cushy site goes down then you/your client is down for editing and it just becomes a static site.
It would be awesome for Cushy to open source that and web devs could run their own little cushy on their site for their clients.
Great list though - thanks for compiling it!
McK
November 6th, 2008
I must say i love Textpattern
Neil Ruffolo
November 6th, 2008
I recommend adding http://www.graffiticms.com to this list. One of the few ASP.NET-based CMSs with many options for the back-end database (MySQL, MSSQL, Access or VistaDB). It offers the simplicity of Wordpress with options to make it less “bloggy”. A good alternative to DotNetNuke for simpler sites. Oh, and it’s free for non-commercial use (just $99 otherwise).
jack
November 6th, 2008
If all you need is to edit content online, you could go with any cms, but if you want more, and more, the only choice is Drupal! check this Drupal site: http://divinearts.org
jc786
November 6th, 2008
can anyone recommend a cms for portal sites? ie template driven sites for a number of linked organisation. thanks
Res
November 6th, 2008
I personally really like Square Space. But nothing can beat Wordpress
JT Smith
November 6th, 2008
WebGUI (http://www.webgui.org) is a quite popular system in use on over 10,000 sites. It’s free, and hundreds of huge organizations use it like California State University, Hawaii Department of Education, Volvo, Brunswick Bowling, and the United States Department of State.
Nathan LeMesurier
November 6th, 2008
Check out Rocketship (http://getrocketship.com). It’s a user-friendly, inexpensive hosted CMS for smaller sites.
We’ve built a ton of websites as a web design firm and wanted something that made it easy for our clients to edit their own sites, so we took all of our experience and built Rocketship.
And being a design firm, we’ve built in some great basic templates as well as making it easy to build completely custom designs with CSS.
Jim
November 6th, 2008
cmsbox
http://www.cmsbox.com/
Brady
November 6th, 2008
I’ve been playing around with Wildflower (Cake PHP-based) CMS. Seems promising.
Link: http://wf.klevo.sk/
Yuka
November 6th, 2008
Are you kidding….most of those CMS are years behind SharePoint…
me
November 6th, 2008
i love using symphony since I know xslt. They are about to release their v2 rc1 relatively soon, from what I have gathered, but don’t hold me to that =)
Michael O'Neil
November 6th, 2008
Sava (gosava.com) is a fantastic ColdFusion-based open source CMS. It’s a great alternative for us developers who are not full blooded PHP or Ruby on Rails fanboys.
Ian
November 6th, 2008
Thanks for the list, these CMSs should really get more attention!
I can also recommend Frog CMS, which is basically Radiant CMS for the PHP folks. http://madebyfrog.com/
Also, OpenSourceCMS site is quite comprehensive when it comes to systems for PHP, no matter if blog, wiki or bulletin board. http://opensourcecms.com/
george
November 6th, 2008
Wow, Cushy is almost exactly what I’ve been looking for. My only issue is their hosted admin panel.
Does anyone know of anything with the simplicity of Cushy (just mark content as editable by putting it in a specific div) but with an admin panel that you host on your own server?
Vitaly
November 6th, 2008
what about django?
Mike
November 6th, 2008
Please include DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com). It’s free, has thousands of very low cost modules and is business ready.
I find most of your suggestions to be great for personal or light business uses. However, we have a website with over 100 pages of content as well as many of the available modules which simply are not available on the other cms’s.
David Anson
November 6th, 2008
Nice list! TYPO3 is by far the most complete open source CMS on the list. It is a little intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it…
WebChicklet
November 6th, 2008
Some of the favorites I’ve highlighted on my CMS Jam blog (that are designed for ease of use) include zimplit, snippetmaster, and cms made simple, but ripe website manager might be a favorite once it comes out of beta too.
Nate
November 6th, 2008
why no textpattern?
HHMan
November 6th, 2008
Another one to check out is eCrowds: http://www.ecrowds.com
carlos@webbynode
November 6th, 2008
I would recommend Mephisto, its based on Rails. Its a ‘blog’ engine, but you can do pretty much anything with it.
JONxBLAZE
November 6th, 2008
From a web developer’s point of view, Joomla is still the best CMS out there, even far superior than WordPress.
Shayna
November 6th, 2008
Zikula! My favorite by far! http://www.zikula.org
AtlasEric
November 6th, 2008
I have been using and swear by ProfusionSiteBuilder from NetSolutionsNA.com
So easy…So customizable…
Pupppet
November 6th, 2008
CMS Made Simple mops the floor up with the majority of the CMS’s mentioned here.
Codrin
November 6th, 2008
WP / EE
Alexis
November 6th, 2008
There’s one with a name similar as the one foobarph recommended (CMS Made Simple http://cmsmadesimple.org) and it is very simple indeed. It saves the contents of the website in a single file and uses tags to define the pages. CMSimple http://www.cmsimple.com/
Jukka-Pekka Keisala
November 6th, 2008
Railfrog has great ideas but it seems nobody is developing it. I have not seen even demo site and I have been looking the project closely for couple of years. Typo3 (IMHO) is a mess.
ModX is indeed is a different and quite intresting, also expression engine and Radiant are promising. The rest on the CMS’s on your list I have not tried but I will take a look. Thanks for the intresting post!
Dru
November 6th, 2008
Symphony is actually made by 21degrees, Overture is just the name for the community site (forums, plugins etc etc).
emin
November 6th, 2008
my favorite zimplit cms!
File in a Box
November 6th, 2008
Great post, but why on earth is Typo3 listed! Isn’t this about *promising* content management systems? Typo3 has been around for ages and is a horrible archaic mess.
If it were any good, it should have been much more popular by now.
Carlo
November 6th, 2008
another vote for cms made simple. This cms really lives up to it’s name, i find it similar to expression engine and it is free. My other vote goes to expression engine as it a powerful cms, however it’s not free. Another cms I’ve tried is joomla but this one doesnt get my vote because it is not easy to use.
Darryl
November 6th, 2008
Vignette V7 Rocks!
Reece
November 6th, 2008
Memht Ftw
Jim
November 6th, 2008
BlogEngine.Net is free and runs on Windows.
James
November 6th, 2008
We use a small lesser known CMS called Minotaur - http://www.minotaurcms.com.au. It has a fully function shopping cart attached.
Ehhh
November 6th, 2008
Joomla is still king.
Drupal
November 6th, 2008
DRUPAL!
Liam
November 6th, 2008
Think corecms.co.nz is one of the best out there in terms of the power and functionality it has as a complete business solution for a company, with great e-commerce abilities and is always updated. You have to pay and pay for it yearly but what you get out of it as a company is intense.
John
November 6th, 2008
SilverStripe won Packtpub Open Source CMS award for “most promising” CMS.
Here is an in-depth review by an impartial judge:
http://cmsreport.com/content/judging-five-most-promising-content-management-systems
You’ll understand why it got such a good review for usability when you watch this 8 minute silent video!
http://www.silverstripe.com/assets/video/cms.html
John Coonen
November 7th, 2008
Jason, Is there a reason why you left Joomla! off the list? Joomla may be the big boy on the OS block, so maybe it’s easy to skip over in favor of the lesser-knowns, which you’ve outlined quite well (kudos), but leaving Joomla off the hotlist is like leaving strawberry ice cream off the list of favorite desserts.
http://www.Joomla.org
Vince
November 7th, 2008
Railfrog should not be on this list. It is DEAD.
Ben
November 7th, 2008
I’m quite partial to TYPOlight, which is an open-source php5 / mysql cms that renders standards-compliant, css / div pages. Aside from the standard things you’d expect from a solid cms, some of the standout features include:
- live updates (with the click of a button, you’re install is current)
- integrated extension repository (install add-ons from the backend)
- powerful frontend / backend permissions
- content versioning
- integrated calendar, news / blog, newsletters, form generator
Definitely worth a look! http://www.typolight.org
TomJ
November 7th, 2008
ExpressionEngine and MODx look very interesting!
Great that Drupal and Wordpress are now considered as the “popular content management systems”! :)
Drupal all the way for me!
Tom
jujudellago
November 7th, 2008
My favorite is CMS Made Simple (http://cmsmadesimple.org)
considering my needs are:
- fast and easy integration
- limited access to simple edition for my customers
- implement any type of templates
I tried joomla & typo3, but it’s really not for me, as these framework are designed for more sophisticated websites, it always require so much configuration that I end up with a really massive CMS, with thousands of useless files and features. (plus the user interface of typo3 is the uglyest I ever seen, just feels like windows 95 to me..)
as a rails developper, it’s just faster and simpler to build from scratch.
Jerrett
November 7th, 2008
A nice hosted CMS we are about to launch into open beta is Viviti, http://viviti.com
Kian
November 7th, 2008
TYPO3 is by far the most used Open Source CMS in the world with more than 1.000.000 implementations worldwide. Yes it does have a major focus in countries surrounding Germany but nevertheless its the only true enterprise Open Source CMS with all the feature completeness you need. It is used by large enterprises allover the world, something that none of the other other Open Source CMSes abpart from EZ Publish and Open CMS have ever managed. TYPO3 is getting a bit old but thats why the new 5.0 branch has been started more than a year ago and the Flow 3.0 framework it will be based on is one of the most powerful PHP Frameworks in the world.
Henderson
November 7th, 2008
Hello,
anybody know which free CMS has best metadata support for all types of media files? So you can upload a picture, video or audio, tag it with several keywords and then list according to that.
Thanks.
Henderson.
JD (1to1million)
November 7th, 2008
The RailFrog project seems to have gone quite all through 2008?
Chris Pratt
November 7th, 2008
Is is just me? I really don’t consider anything built on ASP to be a viable CMS solution. PHP, Ruby, Python… these languages will run on any box known to man. With ASP, I’m forever tied to a Windows hosting server. And, ewww.
Alison
November 7th, 2008
are they all free?
davidm
November 7th, 2008
I am glad to see modx in there :)
It’s probably the most flexible CMS I have ever worked with, and I came from Textpattern (2+ years) which is already pretty flexible which should speak to txp users !
Now I have to agree with Fred about typolight : it’s not very well known outside of germany but it has all the qualities to become the next Drupal : it has built-in multi-lingual, multi-site capabilities and versionning. On top of that, it’s the only CMS I know aside from modx, EE and eZpublish to handle custom content types out of the box (Drupal needs the CCK module) and does not force you into a content pattern.
It’s an underdog, alright, but it’s one of the few CMS with a fully accessible admin (works 100% without JS), it’s built for PHP5 from the start, coded in OO (check out the code you’ll see quality is there) and has some unique modules like formauto and catalog.
The only thing typolight is missing is marketing… with it, a wider international user base and boom it could become a BIG player.
Ian D. Miller
November 7th, 2008
I’m a big fan of cushy. I use it any place I know my client is going to want to add some text, so instead of placeholding with “text goes here” I just add a cushy div. They haven’t been adding very many features though…project seems a bit stale. Haven’t had any issues with the service being down, but if they aren’t able to get enough people to subscribe to the pro service then the company could be in trouble…they probably aren’t used too heavily so maybe there’s not too much cost associated with the site.
It’s the only service I know of that offers the service they way they do. I agree, an open source route makes sense for them. BTW, there is a potential issue if you have trust issues with a client of yours. There is the ability to insert PHP via the editor. Just be aware of that.
Schop
November 7th, 2008
By now, everybody should know that PivotX is absolutely the most promising there is. It’s still in Beta, but already very solid, and will probably get a Release Candidate version soon. Go check it out at http://www.pivotx.net, absolutely recommended for people with a blog, and you can use it as a CMS as well…
Bogdan
November 8th, 2008
My vote goes for MODx! But it is always interesting to see what CM systems are around :-)
File in a Box
November 8th, 2008
@Yuka: Are you kidding? Have you ever tried customizing SharePoint beyond the web interface? It is the most awful thing to work with for a programmer.
I think even a free open source blog CMS such as WordPress can do a better job than SharePoint serving a website (of course I am not talking about the SharePoint file management which does not exist in any of the mentioned CMS-es).
I use WordPress for http://fileinabox.com and I absolutely love it.
Martin
November 8th, 2008
You should include other CMS as well:
Leading Microsoft ASP.NET system is AxCMS.net (www.AxCMS.net)
Leading Java system is Alfresco (www.alfresco.org)
Both are free of charge …
cheers
Martin
Arik Jones
November 8th, 2008
First off, Drupal? No thanks. If you notice, most of the systems displayed here are elegant, simple and sturdy on one level or another. Drupal is monolithic in everything it tries to do.
If you’re on Rails, RadiantCMS is by far the best way to go. I also give mad props to EE for the PHP guys out there. If you’re not aware, there is a PHP equivalent of RadiantCMS called FrogCMS at http://madebyfrog.com.
Tim | TechFruit
November 8th, 2008
Good list, but there are a few I think you are missing:-
eZpublish - I have been using it for pushing 5 years now, but it is amazingly easy to mold into doing absolutely anything. A framework with a lot editable without getting your hands too dirty in the code.
MadeByFrog is just like RadiantCMS but for PHP, so more people can use it. It is also a lightweight PHP framwork and I think is the most promising CMS around at the moment.
Drupal and Wordpress - I imagine the only reason you left these off was that they are already popular and aren’t ‘promising’ as such. Great, extendable CMSes with a amazing communities though.
Also, ModX is a fork of Etomite, and that has come leaps and bounds recently too. They are similar, but Etomite is a bit more simple to use, whilst ModX has more bells and whistles.
Sammy Perez
November 9th, 2008
Another one to watch for is Sitemasher. I have kicked it around and it seems quite promising. It’s a .net hosted solution, that is in development.
Dainis Graveris
November 9th, 2008
useful roundup, didn’t know there are so much more promising CMS :)
Roderick van Domburg
November 9th, 2008
I can vouch for Radiant CMS. It’s so simple and clean that it’s just awesome. Not to mention extensible too! We do a lot of workgroup-sized sites in Radiant.
For the enterprise market it’s best to look somewhere else and in fact we’ll be unveiling our own free-of-cost enterprise web CMS soon!
Mambo
November 10th, 2008
Perhaps Mambo should also have been mentioned. Although its now 8 years old and has had over 8 million downloads (almost 1.5 million in the last year alone), since Joomla forked a lot of people have either assumed Mambo is dead, or that Mambo and Joomla are so similar that its not worth bothering to check Mambo out. Wrong! The days of bloated code have long gone and Mambo is a very different CMS to Joomla. These days, its probably fair to say Mambo is a little less “in your face” but definitely promising!
Have a look at it and see: http://mambo-code.org/ for downloads.
Andrea Decker
November 10th, 2008
LightCMS offers a very easy to use CMS for web designers. http://www.speaklight.com. Hosted solution, Software as a Service. Great support for the end user.
PY
November 10th, 2008
Very useful indeed, and thanks to the commenters also!
Arik Jones
November 11th, 2008
+1 for RadiantCMS. I’ve been hacking on it a lot lately. It has some awesome potential to run as a hosted service as well.
likewhoa
November 11th, 2008
All these CMS are for the novice users and none of the really good CMS are mentioned. Drupal and Django are worth mentioning but these CMS are not for your average joe so people think, to many people promote CMS that hold your hand, which is fine with me as long as the good CMS gain tweakers at heart. any CMS that’s open-sources has my vote no matter how easy it is to us, but come on mention the technical CMS also as those are more than just promising CMS.
Farid Hadi
November 11th, 2008
Wow. Thanks for a great post.
There is a lot of information in the comments too =)
SandFighter
November 11th, 2008
Well it all depends on what you want the CMS for. If it’s a powerful portal, I would choos PHP-Fusion 7. It’s incredibly pewrful, and it seems that everybody forgot about it. But now its back and its at its best.
For a blog I wanted WP, but my layout specification is too rough for WP. So i wrote down one myself :D.
Overal, cool article, many people can benefit from it! :)
J
November 11th, 2008
Good list but why not mention a couple others like drupal and wordpress.
Also, its worth mention light cms (www.speaklight.com) its for designers.
Geoserv
November 11th, 2008
STUMBLED!
Haven’t heard of most of these, good list.
jd
November 12th, 2008
try taking a peak at http://www.myspotnote.com. Not really CMS per se, but an easy way to let non-tech users edit text/images on an existing HTML page. Best part is, you don’t even need to re-build the page, and if you want to, you can limit them to what they can do.
Sugar Web Design
November 12th, 2008
Currently use Wordpress, but this list is great to start trying other systems. Thanks for the work!
Mark
November 13th, 2008
I want to start an online business in 2009 and am looking around at how to get there. Your list and the remarks it generated are very useful. You seem to be a nice community of people who make insightful comments. Good luck to you all.
Robert
November 13th, 2008
I second Kevin Harder on Graffiti. One of the easiest CMS’s to use. You download, unzip, upload and it just works!
Custom PHP
November 13th, 2008
According to the Graffiti it is built on Dot Net. This requires a windows server. I prefer the CMS’ built on PHP/MySql. LAMP just works better for me.
Tyler Beckett
November 14th, 2008
Frog CMS (http://www.madebyfrog.com) I’ve been using it since June of this year (2008) and I am extremely happy with it. Very light and very powerful.
Trix
November 15th, 2008
I just now stumbled upon a CMS called “Briddle” by a Dutch firm (Stijlers).
Check out their website at http://briddle.stijlers.nl (no demo, just screenshots). Use the “Google translate to english” link in the upper left corner if you can’t read Dutch either :)
Hyper
November 18th, 2008
@Yuka:
Sharepoint is not a “most promising CMS”.
Out of the box, Sharepoint has limited functionality. Some very basic intranet-type uses with a bit of DMS bolted on. If you’re a MS volume/enterprise customer, your users are already licensed to as Sharepoint clients. But to license the organisation properly, here’s a little costing exercise for a business of 300 users: $1.1million. That includes things like MS Windows Server, SQL Server, Sharepoint server, etc etc…MS really know how to leech money from your org and keep leeching. From a skills POV, SHarepoint is not much use to a small team of developers, so get ready to open your org’s purse-strings for 3rd party developers, not forgetting those ubiquitous consultancy fees. Vote of no confidence from me.
Jacob Gube
November 19th, 2008
@Hyper: I’d have to agree with Hyper on that one. Sharepoint is very unwieldy, and if you’re a person who cares about not just how a a web page looks, but also how the source code looks like - Sharepoint’s mark up is horrendous.
PHP Programmer
November 20th, 2008
If you’re starting from scratch I recommend CodeIgniter. It is very light-weight and easy to learn for the new programmers.
Chris O'Donnell
November 21st, 2008
Has nobody mentioned Django? (jang-go) It’s an open-source framework buit with python. http://djangoproject.com/
Sean
November 25th, 2008
Gotta go with Expression Engine. I tested at least 50 systems and it was the only one that truly let me do whatever I wanted to do (design and code wise) with no boundaries. Modx was close but was a little harder to learn and their blogging/newslister extension was poorly documented.
You can set up as many custom fields and field groups as you want for any kind of information you want to publish. And (and this was key for me) you can avoid the wysiwyg editing “features” from plug-ins like tinymce. Don’t want your client to make everything bold, centered and purple? Me neither. So, you preplan what sections of pages should be styled in what way (like a good designer should) and you make those into custom fields in the manager. They just fill in the text and the styling is handled behind the scenes. Of course, if you want to allow them to bold, italicize, etc., you can.
EE was the only application where I felt like I could truly build a custom application tailored to my clients rather that working around the restrictions of the CMS. And I’m not a coding genius either. I know html and css and that’s it. If you know php, you can take it even further.
Freya Njord
December 8th, 2008
For your clients basic websites I would go with something similar to Cushy or Surreal CMS. I have been hearing great things about a new CMS called Shepherd (http://www.shepherdcms.com)
0ad
December 9th, 2008
I use modx and love it. support is great too.
MattL
December 20th, 2008
I started as a graphic designer. I built websites years ago with FrontPage and Dreamweaver and without knowing much code I ended up working with WordPress. I wanted to customize the already made themes, and slowly picked up CSS… and then a little php… then eventually I’ve picked up enough to build my own custom themes/templates from scratch. They have a great community and great documentation.
Lulu
December 26th, 2008
Most of these are new to me. Thanks for providing some insight.
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