8 Of The Best Free Content Management Systems
There are a number of fantastic Content Management Systems available whether they are a free solution or a paid solution. Regardless of cost a Content Management System can be incredibly beneficial to yourself or to your clients as they save so much time and effort.
I have listed 8 of the Best Free Content Management Systems available at present, these various systems can be used for different projects types such as: blogs, forums, general websites, e-commerce and social networks.
Below each is a brief description of each and any requirements needed. The list is in no particular order.
Drupal is one of the worlds most used CMS softwares, it can be used for a wide variety of projects, from sites like Digg, social networks and even simple sites and blogs.
Requirements – PHP (4.35+) MySQL (4.1+)
ExpressionEngine is a CMS with many great features and is extremely flexible for whatever project you opt to use it for. It has a free core version as well as paid versions.
Requirements – PHP (4.1+) MySQL (3.23.32+)
Frog is a PHP version of Radiant CMS (a Ruby on Rails app.) Frog uses a unique templating system which allows you to jump in and start editing straight away.
Requirements – PHP (5+) MySQL (5+)
Joomla is an award winning CMS, with it you can build flexible and powerful sites and web applications, with a number of extensions you can tailor Joomla to any project you could hope for.
Requirements – PHP (4.35+) MySQL (4.1+)
MovableType can be used for blogs, websites and various types of online community. There are also paid options which allow various extras and support.
Requirements – PHP (5+) MySQL (5+)
Plone is a easy to use CMS for use on the web and on Intranet systems.
Requirements – Plone covers a good number of systems, please check here for more info (Plone Requirements)
SilverStripe is a quick CMS, easy to install and easy to use, with various extensions SilverStripe can quickly become an online shop, a forum or even a blog.
Requirements – PHP (5.2+) MySQL (4.1+)
Wordpress is an Open Source project with thousands of people worldwide contributing by way of plugin, design and anything in-between. Wordpress is primarily a blogging CMS, but can be used for other types of site too.
Requirements – PHP (4.3+) MySQL (4.0+)
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November 25, 2009
Wordpress is definitely my favorite in this list!
November 25, 2009
You seem to have forgotten PivotX from Dutch origin…
November 25, 2009
Shame Modx isn’t here – http://www.modxcms.com
November 25, 2009
Thanks for the mentions Lee and Irene, I did contemplate including Modx but opted for SilverStripe.
November 25, 2009
Nice sharing thanks.
November 25, 2009
Title of the article should be “8 Of The Best Free Content Management Systems for the PHP/MySQL platform.” An obvious CMS omission would be DotNetNuke on the .NET/MSSQL platform.
November 25, 2009
Fair point Kurt, Plone works on more than just PHP though!
Maybe I should cover some .net Content Management Systems at a later date
November 26, 2009
i don’t know if Expression Engine should be considered free. it’s “freemium”, meaning all roads will lead you to a paid version.
i personally would recommend textpattern.
it’s amazing how much you can do with it without knowing any php.
one project i made was a mobile site that tells you what’s going on in the city, that night and just that night only. the next day a fresh set of events are shown. this program took very little time to make.
textpattern lets you override a lot of those things that most bloggy cms apps make very difficult.
November 26, 2009
Expressions engine is free only in demo version, ie, the plugins to it aren’t free…
Also I heard that it’s terrible for SEO purposes, a lot of setting up yourself etc.
I always wanted to use silverstripe!
I used Joomla and it’s easy but too big and slow…
Wordpress is really cool, but it’s not really a full cms, there’s still stuff to be done, unless you’re using Thesis for it.
Plone seems to be really cool, but it’s learning another programing language :/
Drupal is quite good, but I didn’t manage to master it fast enough to be honest, but it’s good for SEO, but so is wordpress.
November 26, 2009
Wordpress is definitely my favorite in this list! thanks..
December 1, 2009
Drupal is my favorite from all of these. I’ve used it to make quite a few sites. Most have video, audio, events that don’t publish until a certain date, blogs, forums etc really nice organization on the admin side. There so much you can customize. I don’t know really any php and it hasn’t slowed me down, yet. If you do know it, you can write your own module to do whatever you want. Their API is not hard to learn..
also Indexhibit is awesome for really simple, image driven sites. Love the simplicity of the admin pages.
December 2, 2009
Wordpress is definitely my favorite in this list, too! thanks..
January 16, 2010
I’m another one in the Wordpress camp! I haven’t tried them all, generally speaking I’d rather write a CMS than use one, however Wordpress is a thing of beauty!
January 16, 2010
I do like a custom CMS myself, but Wordpress has slowly won me over!