14 Free CMS Options for Web

14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

web design services blog forum contact

Home > Reviews > 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed May 17th 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed posted in: Reviews , Web Design

At the center of most (if not all) web development projects is the old chestnut we call content management systems. Choosing a CMS for your website, or indeed for your enterprise is no easy task - in Europe alone, you have around 500 systems to choose from. Whether that system is something complex or something simple (i.e. hand editing), it is an essential part of a successful site. Enabling content editors to perform website updates (however inexperienced) with the web has always been something of a challenge for developers, thankfully there are a number of platforms and open source projects out there which take the hassle out of developing your own system, and can put you in the running for projects normally outside of your scope. The following hopefully provides a comprehensive overview of some of the best out there, and we’ve tried to be as comprehensive in our review of each.

Impress CMS

Technology : PHP RDMS: a MySQL (others are planned) Setup time: 10 minutes Supported OS: Unix / Windows, MacOS

Features:

Flexible group-based permission system Fully module-based Built-in cache system

URL : http://www.impresscms.org FEATURE URL: http://www.impresscms.org/modules/mastop_publish/?tac=Roadmap

I’ve recently come across an impressive contender that I’ve had to add to the list. ImpressCMS is a fairly recent fork of Xoops, the project has managed to impress both the audience and the jury, resulting in the winning spot on the Most Promising Open Source CMS awards 2009.

1 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Installation is a breeze, just complete a few fields on a web form and your new site is ready to go. Designers will love the theme and template system, and the bundled jQuery javascript library makes some nifty visual effects possible.

Where the core provides the basics, the bells and whistles reside in the installable modules. With 200 of them available at the moment of writing, there will surely be a module that caters to your needs. If that shouldn’t be the case, adapting an existing module or starting a new one from scratch is made painless thanks to stellar support on the community forums and imBuilding, a module to build modules.

Typo 3

Technology : PHP Supported RDMS: MySQL, Oracle, MS-SQL, ODBC Setup time: 45 minutes+ Supported OS: Windows / Unix / MacOSX

Features:

On page editing Intuitive Tree Structure for pages , folders and files Internal Search Engine

URL : http://typo3.com FEATURE URL: http://typo3.com/Feature_list.1243.0.html

If you are looking for power over simplicity then Typo 3 is one such option. Starting out with TYPO3 does require time and dedication, both from an administrative point of view. End users can expect to spend around 45 minutes plus to get up and running with the admin tools, depending on how IT literate they are at the minute. To take advantage of its full power, you will need to get your reading glasses out. Admins are going to get it tough, there is significant documentation - 1600 (and counting) pages of references and tutorials, and you are going to have to read at least some of it. However there is no question forum on their website, which you would expect from an Open source solution such as this. On the plus side, the features this product offers are second to none, and are continuing to grow through the PHP development community, and some of the clients using this include large brands such as Philips and the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago.

Cushy CMS

Technology : Browser Based (PHP engine) Setup time: 5 minutes+ Supported OS: N/A - hosted

2 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Features:

On page editing Extremely Simple

URL: http://www.cushycms.com/

If Typo 3 is the Rolls Royce of the CMS world, then Cushy CMS has got to be a Mini. A fluffy Light and Small web 2.0 application this CMS is one of the easiest and quickest to get up and running with, although it is strictly a hosted solution, and to run it you need to provide your FTP details through Cushy’s website. In order to set the system up you simply add css styles to the sections which need changed, Cushy then changes the page on the fly, and sends it back to the ftp server itself. I would be a little worried about the security implications of passing FTP details over cleartext, and it obviously has to keep a hold on your passwords *somewhere* on its own server..which in my opinon is a bit of a risk. From their own website: “CushyCMS accesses and stores sensitive website login data as part of its daily operations. While we will take every reasonable precaution to secure these details (including the use of database data encryption), we will not accept any responsibility or liability for actions that may result from this data being intercepted or accessed by an unauthorized third-party.” In other words, if it all goes Pear shaped “We aint takin no responsibility “. None the less, this does seem to be a good concept for breaking things down to a simple level, my fear is that it is too simple. This current version will not enable content editors to add a new page - for that, they will have to go back to their webdesigner.

Made By Frog

Technology : PHP RDMS: a MySQL database or SQLite 3 Setup time: 45 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix (Apache)

Features:

On page editing Simple Philosophy Add pages & Images Extendable, includes an API Uses Templating Code.

URL: http://www.madebyfrog.com/ SUPPORT FORUM: http://forum.madebyfrog.com/

3 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Created as a PHP port of Radiant CMS (Ruby on Rails app), Frog CMS carries the motto “Fast and Simple”. And it stands up to the test - we found that it took up quite a bit smaller memory footprint than the Ruby equivalent. The learning curve (provided you know a bit about PHP) is also relatively fast, and you can be up and running with a content managed solution in as little as 45 minutes. Complimenting the main site is a support forum, and good clear documentation. However if you are a complete PHP newbie, this one probably is still a bit involved, and although it uses a templating system, it will still prove to be a pain to implement - say over something like Wordpress. We also found that the download on their site was corrupt, and had to grab it via Tortoise SVN. We would say to stick out at it though and you will be rewarded in what is an extremely well put together Open Source CMS.

Radiant CMS

Technology : Ruby On Rails RDMS: MySQL database, PostReSQL, SQLite3 Setup time: 45 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix (Apache)

Features:

Elegant user interface Flexible templating with layouts, snippets, page parts, and a custom tagging language Simple user management and permissions

URL: http://www.radiantcms.com/

This is the product that inspired Frog CMS, and it has pretty much the same layout and feel as Frog, only that it is a Ruby on Rails app. The community around Radiant however does feel to be much more active, and if that is your bag, and you are a Ruby developer, then this is the CMS for you. Thankfully developers have started to break down the barriers to entry for content management systems, and the newer ones such Radiant have concentrated heavily on making things much more friendly for both the end user and web designers. The custom tagging langugage (Radius) is also particularly nice in this system, and should

4 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

be a breeze for anyone who has done any Ruby work to pick up.

Modx CMS

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL database Setup time: 45 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix (Apache)

Features:

Strong Web Standards Support Web 2.0 Features Graphical Installer

URL: http://modxcms.com/

The MODx Ajax CMS and PHP Application Framework brings plenty to the table, with as it is a application framework, not only is ModX a CMS, but it is a Web application builder as well, supporting forms creation amongst other things. The templating language for ModX is particularly simple to get to grips with tags placeholders which are easily to integrate. ModX also has a strong focus towards two things close to my heart - search engine optimisation and Web Standards. Its no surprise then that ModX came out winner in the Most Promising Open Source Content Management System of 2007, holding off strong competition from SilverStrip, Nuke Evolution, Typolight and dotCMS - all reviewed here. “MODx is the alternative to hacking blogging tools and other tools to death, extended learning curves, and changing your workflow to fit software that just doesn’t quite “get it”. MODx allows you to focus on usability, design, content and building great sites, not on the tools that build them.”

SilverStripe

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL database Setup time: 30 minutes+ Supported OS: Windows/Linux/Mac

Features:

Online image editor Widgets User Defined Forms Search Engine Optimised Windows and PHP installer. Version Control

5 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

URL: http://www.silverstripe.com

SilverStripe is an open source product born out of an existing closed source one. The small New Zealand based company decided last year to offer its innovative CMS to customers free, and as a result has achieved over 100,000 downloads of the system. And its no surprise why. SilverStripe is Wordpress on steroids, and because it is completely tailored towards content management, and not blogging, (although it can do this too) you wont be disappointed with the features. SilverStripe shinks (uploaded) images on the fly, has support for drafts and preview, allows users to review and roll back (version control) and has support for SEO out of the box (including URL rewriting). Its target market - is somewhere between Wordpress users and Mambo or Drupal which is perfect for the small to mid-sized development team. The companies credentials are also sound - Just last it achieved support from Google - in the form of Google’s summer of code 2007 . Recently Sun did a bit of a case study on them too. We are keeping a close eye on this badboy.

Alfresco

Technology : JSP RDMS: MySQL 5, Oracle 10 Setup time: 15 minutes+ Supported OS: Red Hat Enterprise, Sun Solaris 10, Windows Server 2003

Features:

Enterprise Level solution Micro Sites WebDAV / LDAP Authentication Version Control Convert PDF to Text via upload Version Control

URL: http://www.alfresco.com

6 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

As an enterprise solution I expected this to be a typical “community” edition, pushing a closed source version with additional features at a premium. Not so with Alfresco, the only difference being the level of support your receive from the team. Installing Alfresco is a breeze, with database setup and other configuration done for you after answering a few questions - I had my test setup running on a Windows 2003 Server in about 15 minutes. Dropping different types of document into folders (spaces) generates new content on the site, and when combined with rules, enables web publishers to use PDF’s directly as web content. They would appear at first glance to be going after the Microsoft Sharepoint market, however compared to commercial content management and portal offerings, Alfresco lacks advanced workflow tools.

Typolight

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL starting from 4.1, MySQLi, Oracle, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase Setup time: 5-10 minutes+ Supported OS: Windows (IIS) / *Nix (Apache)

URL: http://www.typolight.org/

Features:

Modular - easy to Extend MVC architecture Form generators Calendar/events Newsfeeds

Once you begin working with Typolight, you will realise that the capabilities of the product out of the box are extremely impressive. There is alot more functionality when comparing to other CMS systems out there, but fortunately aren’t so many features as to overpower the end user or administrators with them. User rights are extremely flexible where you can specify which user gets access to editing which field, which is refreshing compared to say Joomla, which guesses more at user access levels. The system also generates valid XHTML, and WAI accessible code ,

7 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

which is an added bonus.

DotCMS

Technology : J2EE/Java RDMS: MySQL, Postgresql, MSSQL or Oracle. Setup time: 60 minutes+ Supported OS: Windows or UNIX servers

Features:

Site-wide Templating Streaming MP3 Player Content Relationships Inline Content Editing Content versioning

URL: http://www.dotcms.org

FEATURE URL: http://www.dotcms.org/the_dotcms/features.dot

dotCMS is a portal-based Web Content Management System. It offers a compelling set of features out of the box all on an extensible platform that can be customized to suit just about any Web CMS need - all provided you know your JSP. dotCMS, has gone down the commercialisation route of offering “on-demand” installs. At first impressions, dotCMS’s admin screens appeared relatively complex- I didn’t automatically know where to go and what to do when I had logged in, and for that reason - regardless of the functionality it took some time to get to grips with.

Umbraco

Technology : ASP.NET (C#) RDMS: MS SQL Setup time: 10 minutes+ Supported OS: Windows

Features:

Super simple template engine Full support for Ajax frameworks like Script.aculo.us or ASP.NET Ajax Scheduled publishing Support for any .NET Language including C# and VB.NET

URL: http://www.umbraco.org

8 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

If you are a Microsoft aficionado, you will be quite aware that open source projects on the .NET platform are few and far between. The same is true with CMS systems, with (to my knowledge) only DotNetNuke, and Umbraco contending for the position of best ASP.NET open source content management solution. It’s a further bonus to discover that not only is umbraco open source, but its also an awesome, well built piece of software. As with most CMS systems being developed now, Umbraco is too committed to webstandards, and indeed has focused on provding at platform to achieve perfect CSS and XHTML zen. It utilises XSLT to style content, so a knowledge of this would be an advantage - although its not a necessity. We were up and running within about 10 minutes - the .NET installer script setting up the database etc, all we had to do was set some bits and pieces in IIS. If you are a .NET developer - go grab a copy, as the user community has also achieved notarity- winning awards - you know that you’ll be backed up with exceptional support.

CMS Made Simple

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL Setup time: 15 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix

Features:

Modular and extensible Minimal server requirements Small footprint Content hierarchy with unlimited depth and size

URL: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/

FEATURE URL: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/features/

9 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

To get a site up with CMS Made Simple is just that, simple. For those with more advanced ambitions there are plenty of addons to download. And there is an excellent community at your service. The cms admin system is very clean - both from a code and design perspective. We found the learning curve quite gradual, which is an extremely important point in a CMS. The third party modules being developed add additional value to the project - with everything from E-commerce to core Translation.

Drupal

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL/PostgreSQL Setup time: 45 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix and Windows

Features:

Friendly URLs Modules & Support Personalisation

URL: http://drupal.org/

FEATURE URL: http://drupal.org/features

Unlike Mambo, it is easy to hack the templates, layout, menus and navigation of a Drupal site, which make it the perfect system for developers and designers alike. It’s architecture is somewhat difficult to get to grips with, and this is made no easier with its own jargon throughout the documentation - but when you bite through its tough exterior, Drupal is an extremely juicy fruit in the middle - and its juice definitely worth the squeeze. The search engine optimisation support is second to none, with super friendly URL’s - which is what you would expect from a system of this size. Primarily Drupal’s strength lies in its user contributed modules allowing you to extend functionality by easily installing the functionality required. At time of writing there were over 3500 user contributed modules on the site.

Mambo

Technology : PHP RDMS: MySQL/PostgreSQL Setup time: 35 minutes+ Supported OS: *Nix and Windows

Features:

Page caching

10 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Content macro language (mambots) visitor statistics Voting / Polls Internationalisation

URL: http://www.mamboserver.com/

First impressions with Mambo is that its interface is very clean and usable, however development of the system has been somewhat overtaken, by Joomla. For the un-initiated, Joomla is a fork of the main mambo trunk, and some of the leads development team left to set up Joomla. Fast forward a few years, and Joomla wins last year’s Open Source awards . Anyway, politics aside, the system is still of Enterprise Quality, and extremely feature rich. It can be easily configured to allow registered users to log in and edit pages via the web, as we would expect the tools made available for authors are straightforward and require little or no training. From a developer perspective, some decent documentation is available at http://docs.mamboserver.com/ .

Well with over 500 CMS systems out there…we couldn’t review them all. But if there isn’t anything in here to meet your needs, maybe some of these will. If there are any we have missed here let us know..Feel free to comment.

Some of the best of the rest..

For Blogging..And CMS.

http://www.wordpress.org http://www.movabletype.org

Just CMS

http://www.aegir-cms.org/ http://www.joomla.org http://expressionengine.com http://www.postnuke.com http://www.ariadne-cms.org/ http://wiki.flux-cms.org http://bricolage.cc/

Comprehensive List of CMS systems http://www.oscom.org/matrix/

p.s. Have you seen our Email Marketing systems review ? We think you’ll love that post as well. Go check it out.

11 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

8 free and open source intranet solutions reviewed. 12+ open source projects for .NET you probably didn’t know about. 13 awesome open source music sites for digital creatives 9 of the best Rich Text editors reviewed Surfing on a wave of internet demand to grow. 11 iphone apps every web designer should download What type of blogger are you? Old school internet marketing 1.0 19+ resources for finding and hosting source code. 8 of the best tumblelog platforms reviewed. 6 common sense tips on how to go viral 7 free blog client alternatives reviewed 8 of the best web design resource pages 17 more must see horizontal scrolling websites 13 creative websites to find fresh and new music.

Top 10 Content Management CMS - Free Trial & Demo 2010 Top 10 Content Management Software Ranking Powerful, Robust Content Management System. Report. Get it Now Built-in WYSIWYG Editor. Business-Software.com/ContentMgmt www.Ektron.com

121 love filled opinions. What is yours?

CMS’s can be a great (and easy) way to run a website for beginners and pros that don’t have much extra time. I have used xoops in the past and it was pretty good, although it had some SEO issues.

SEO Agency Gal

OpenCms (www.opencms.org) is good Java based CMS.

Tommi

Nice comparison, good work! The only thing which in my eyes is not right is the supported OS-item. I have used and installed seven of the above mentioned CMS’ and I must say that (at least) with the ones I tried the OS doesn’t matter at all and the webserver used neither.

12 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

The important thing is that you get PHP running on the webserver if the CMS needs it and that you have the option to change certain PHP-related options.

taffit

“I would be a little worried about the security implications of passing FTP details over cleartext”

Every time you connect via FTP its in the clear.

Johan

@Johan - yep your right, let me rephrase.

I’d be worried about passing FTP details over HTTP.

Paul Anthony

Ridiculous to show mambo and not joomla as the primary fork, mambo is dead. Joomla is not just some of the developers but the vast majority.

13 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

How could you leave off Plone? It is the best open source CMS by a mile or two.

http://www.plone.org

Kevin Strasser

I’m using Daisy CMS (http://cocoondev.org/daisy/index.html) in a corporate environment and it rocks!

Nicola Ken Barozzi

“(to my knowledge) only DotNetNuke, and Umbraco contending for the position of best ASP.NET open source content management solution.”

Well, then you completely whiffed on this review. Mojoportal is way superior than the 2 projects you mentioned for the .Net platform. Umbraco is a fine product, but the fact that you can’t use it with a virtual directory on Internet Information server makes it a big issue, since you can’t use it on a shared hosting server, among other things. DNN is ok, but the learning curve is a bit steep, and I personally don’t like the architecture.

Yeah Plone is great and Xoops.org could be there to.

realest

14 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Hard to believe you missed Textpattern, as it is a free PHP/MySQL CMS that has been in development for over four years.

Reid

Hi, you could add Redaxo.

-> http://www.redaxo.de

Greets, Jo

Guys guys guys (and gals).

The above isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list. There are plenty of websites out there that do that..now you didn’t expect me to review ALL of them did you ?

Paul Anthony

Got to add Textpattern – made for designers, easy to use and implement, loads of plug-ins and add-ons. http://www.textpattern.com

Matt Lockwood

15 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

A good ColdFusion/CFML on Java option is Sava CMS. It features a great interface for clients, a ton of features, amazing CSS support and is very extensible from a ColdFusion standpoint.

Sean Schroeder

Yo uso desde hace bastantes años SPIP, software libre francés. I use SPIP for many years, french free opensource CMS.

http://www.spip.net

comcinco

Well wordpress and joomla are far ahead in no matter what features you think about.

Sangesh

Good article but it would have been nice if you had used the correct information for Mambo. Mambo has not been on mamboserver.com for two years now. The official site for Mambo is http://mambo- foundation.org .

There is extensive Mambo documentation available now with the main help articles at http://mambo- manual.org .

As to the comments that Mambo is dead, the writer clearly doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. Mambo is in its 8th year and is 23,542 downloads off reaching its 8th million download mark. It’s community and development are active, the codebase is solid, and the forthcoming Mambo 4.7 release will mark the first major step in Mambo becoming a standards compliant, accessible CMS.

The old mamboserver site is definitely dead and is now just a fan site for Mambo with no association with the project. It would be good if you could update your links to point to Mambo. Thanks.

16 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Elpie

Nice work.

One comment on TYPO3: You are right, there isn’t a official forum but there are mailinglists/newsgroups: http://lists.netfielders.de/

Nice UI on the mailinglists: http://support.typo3.org/

Marcus

how on earth could it take 45min+ to install drupal?

unzip, open config text file and set your DB username:password@server

how did that take you 45min+ ???

eatme

@eatme.

Install time and Setup time are two different things.

Perhaps I should have spelt that out.

Im terribly sorry.

17 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Paul Anthony

Probably a good idea to explain what you mean by setup.

e.g. few page types, import some content, set up a blog and podcast would be a good baseline for comparison.

eatme

I have to lend my praise to Textpattern as well. It’s apparent that though the community is relatively small in comparison to heavyweights like Drupal and Joomla, it is a loyal and enthusiastic bunch. The more I use TXP, the more impressed I am with its balance of agility and power. Inexperienced observers see it as a weblogging tool, but it is a very capable CMS with may hidden capabilities waiting to be discovered.

For those extolling WordPress, with all due respect, it is primarily a weblogging platform that requires bending and prodding to get it to work as a CMS. This does require a little extra work. What makes WP so popular is its out-of-the-box simplicity, which can be limiting if you want the advanced features of a true CMS.

Gary Horsman

I really don’t understand why there isn’t Joomla on the list…

Doc

@Doc.

Trying reading the rest of the comments.

and this link in the article.

18 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

http://www.oscom.org/matrix/

Paul Anthony

I have a flat file cms soloution called razorCMS, it can be found at http://www.razorcms.co.uk and is open source GPLv3.

It’s very new and very small/quick, take a look.

thanks

smiffy6969

URL: http://www.mamboserver.com/ FEATURE URL: http://www.mamboserver.com/features

redirect to drupal !!!!

harry

LTSun, snewscms, webyep: just my two cents!

kinda

19 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Symphony deserves a mention.

Egor

I’ve been testing Wordpress these last months and, although it’s a nice machine for blogging, its design capabilities are far from being agile and fast for anybody who focuses in the graphic side of their work.

I’ve suffered and fought to get just little changes in my designs.

I’ve find a CMS site but isn’t free: http://www.inte.es/eng/index.php

They offers a service to manage Dreamweaver built sites. But, my question is … does anybody knows which ones from the list could be the best for a GRAPHIC DESIGNER with Dreamweaver dependecy ?

Ign

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to put this list together. I actually hadn’t heard of several of these options. I saw a demo of concrete5 at OSCON — I swear every other open-source project seems to be a CMS — and was impressed, but had some trouble installing it, so… still looking.

Fitch

My University is has adopted dotCMS, and its a nightmare. Bad or no documentation, and no walk-through instructions on how to do anything.

Bamber

20 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

I have to admit when I saw your entry on Blog Engage I figured this was going to be a fluff piece that simply pulled “reviews” from the product sites. I was pleasantly surprised to find an honest evaluation of the products and what makes them good or bad. Will be bookmarking this page for reference for the next project I need a CMS for.

Michele

This is very helpful. I have already played around with a few cms and was looking for more. I did not even know there were so many.

Asuka

http://cms.e-simplistic.com has a free CMS website which they say is developed in C#.Net. It’s completely free for both private and commercial use which is why it interested me in the first place. It seems to do everything I need including WYSIWYG editor and it’s XHTML compliant which is what my clients always ask for even though many don’t know what it actually means!!!!

Timothy Dutton

ExpressionEngine has blogging functionality built-in, BTW. Comments, trackbacks, moblogging, RSS, etc. Not “just CMS” as you state above.

Nicholas Tolson

21 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

A better alternative to the style and workings of Cushy CMS would be Surreal CMS.

A key point being that if you want to use your branding in the admin panel, Cushy wants a steep $28/month whereas Surreal allows your own branding free. The only trade off is that Surreal allows a 3 site limit and Cushy doesn’t have a limit - although they state in terms and conditions that may decide to charge you if you are too commercial with it.

Prices have to be asked for at Surreal (they don’t don’t post them to their site) and are scalable. I haven’t received a reply for a pricing request yet, so I don’t know if the saying rings true or not “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

Beach Ape

The feature I most like about Cushy CMS is setting containers around which part of a page I can give an editor have access to.

I can’t find any documentation to that ability with any of the other CMS apps people rave about. Editor’s seem have access to the whole page!

Isn’t there a CMS I can install on my machine that works like Cushy?

Bill

@Beach Ape

Surreal CMS is actually a bit cheaper than Cushy — $25 per month. Surreal has some really useful features that you don’t find in Cushy and overall I like the Interface much better. It also seems more responsive and less “cutesy”.

Dale

22 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

I am a big fan of Cushy CMS. Really simple and straight forward. The only downside is having to class your own tags. But I do love being able to specify exactly what my clients have control over editing.

@Bill Shepherd CMS (http://www.shepherdcms.com) looks really promising. It’s similar to Cushy CMS and looks like they might have a couple ‘one-ups’ on Cushy as I hear it.

Don Hoyt

Your URL for “CMS Made Simple” links to something called Etomite.

Dean

Thanks. Very helpful list indeed. It would be unrealistic to expect a review of all the open source CMS out there.

I have worked with Joomla, Drupal, and Mambo. Currently testing MODx following your positive review here. Liking is so far.

Tom

For websites i’ve done in the past… its pretty simple to just identify the text or areas that need modification, put the content for these areas in a content folder and iframe them into the site. Then provide the client with a bat file to upload the content folder to the server so they can change the text themselves.

its a one line CMS!

23 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

TFForums

You need to redo your list to drop Mambo and CMS Made Simple and add Joomla and WordPress instead.

Expert CMS

No I don’t.

Paul Anthony

“No, I don’t”. Ha. I love it. It’s amazing what some people think they’re entitled to. Thanks for this review. It was very informative.

Dr. Scott

QuickerSite Lite Edition is free. It’s big brother (commercial but still very affordable) simply rocks. Check out the demo on http://demo.quickersite.com .

Pieter

Regarding your review of TYPO3, you said:

24 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

“However there is no question forum on their website, which you would expect from an Open source solution such as this.”

This is true, however, there are extensive email lists covering all aspects of TYPO3, from general discussions of all things TYPO3 on the TYPO3-english list (http://lists.netfielders.de/pipermail/typo3- english) to lists on specific extensions to lists for developers like TYPO3-dev (http://lists.netfielders.de /pipermail/typo3-dev).

TYPO3’s community is very open to helping each other out, it is the best open source community I’ve ever been involved with.

Virgil Huston http://acqal.com

Virgil Huston

And getting back to Expression Engine, there is a free version for personal use (Core). It’s brilliant, stable, easy to use and set up, and full-featured. I’ve been using (and recommending) it since it was pMachine and I’d simply never use anything else.

Lisa

What CMS would you recommend for a Nightclub, that wishes to upload images as well as update a diary of events type page. Plus be able to handle templates….

Thanks

Neil

Great site! I just found it. :)

However, I am very disappointed with the coverage of Mambo/Joomla. I started on Mambo and followed to the Joomla project.

25 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Despite 1 reviewer’s suggestion, Mambo has lost most of it’s moment when the core developers left to create a fully open source project. Almost all the 3rd party vendors (who make a living off of a support base) are Joomla centric. The project has gotten so big that it’s now possible to joint local groups of Joomla users.

Both Joomla and Drupal is worthy of anyone’s time and consideration who is looking for a popular open source CMS. And I hope these folks take the time to redo this article without reviewing the slowly dying Mambo project as the “legimate” software system. Joomla should have gotten the review, not Mambo.

I have always had trouble with Drupal.

Thanks for taking the time to show other alternate CMS’s and review each one.

Pliggs

A great list that you put up here, thanks for that!

But how could you forget to mention the great BIGACE Web CMS ?!?

Kevin

Hi Kevin.

I didn’t forget anything. I just left it out.

Deal with it.

Thanks for understanding.

26 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Paul Anthony

So what is this site (”webdistortion”) made from?

Mikey

@Mikey - thanks for popping by. I’m running on Wordpress.

Paul Anthony

Great resource Paul, enjoyed reading about the other CMS available but think I will stick to super Wordpress for the foreseeable future…. oh btw, where the hells Joomla/mambo? (:P)

Justin Parks

I’ve spent hours looking at your choices.

My problem is time… I can’t spend ages learning each system

Most of them have poor documentation and the one which doesn’t need any learning “Cushy CMS” requires you to hand over your FTP info?

I’m beginning to think that I should bite the bullet and jump into… Wordpress. There are lots of tutorials out there and the documentation is good.

Thanks for your list, it has help[ed me look at the alternatives.

27 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Keith D

Hi guys,

Very nice analysis. This help us to choose news system do web site development.

Caco Lourenço

Hey everyone,

I’m just getting familiar with cms systems and I have a website to do for a client where she would like to have a flash banner(I will create) and be able to update text on the fly which is why I’m going to use a cms system.

My question I have is, what is the best open source cms system I should use if I want to be able to use my fully custom designed[created in photoshop cs3(Mockup to client), then sliced/css styled with dreamweaver cs3)??? All responses are greatly appreciated. Also My web hosting company is suggesting “Joomla” but can can I implement my own custom designed templates to “joomla”?

Thanks again for your responses, and great article on cms systems :)

Peter S

Hi there..

Drupal, Joomla are outdated now. Too many people are on it already.

Cushy is great website, Radiant is very good. these CMS provide very good functionalitys.

Have worked on Several CMS

28 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Will Recommend CUSHY,Radiant, SUrreal. Simple Easy to Deliver to Client and Avoiding Maintance

Pareen

Hi guys great topic. I am what you call an old school web designer, you know Photoshop, Dreamweaver and so on. I am looking for a simple CMS which is made for designers with not need for hard code or CSS changes.

Something I can do simply maybe even with a drag and drop function. Anyway i have seen a cms called livecms. But you have to host the whole thing with them and pay a monhtly fee again I love FREE which this isn’t but if its good i dont mind paying too . I tried joomla but find it a bit confusing and i cant code in CSS anyway can anyone sugest something very simple.

Thanks

MR P

Hey there, I just thought I’d add Expression engine to the mix.

Been around for a long time and its a great Blogging/CMS to work with. Especially for Designers. There are many plugins/modules/extensions and the community is great.

http://expressionengine.com

They have a free core edition and two paid editions: personal & Commercial.

I am using this for 80 percent of my site designs.

Ryan

Interesting that Joomla did not get a proper mention.

29 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Carl - Web Courses Bangkok

I just launched GetSimple - http://get-simple.info/ - It’s a flat file cms that has an awesome user interface. Check it out!

Chris

MR. P. and others who are looking for an user-friendly, easy to install and totally free CMS: you could download RuubikCMS (http://www.ruubikcms.com). It’s a bit “old school” but it was developed also with the designer in mind and should work with any HTML/CSS website layout.

isaac

And the correct link for RuubikCMS is:

http://www.ruubikcms.com/

Isaac

These are all great recommendations, but not all of the sites of these systems have visual samples. So, it is hard to tell which CMS solutions conform to existing websites and which require the website design to conform to them. Can somebody help me with this.

30 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Mark Ishii

Thank you a lot for analysis! I was spending quite some time searching for a good cms for web development and managed to miss TYPOlight and Silverstripe. The review is really well done. Thanks again.

tephnyt

Drupal has a *serious* migration problem. There is no automatic migration - and because it depends so heavily on contributed modules, which might not be migrated — it is a real hole in drupal model. Could even become a business risk. Hopefully, drupal.org people will fix this GAPING hole in their system soon. Otherwise Drupal is very good and appears to have a broad base.

Mahesh Lavannis

At the end each CMS is build for something in particular. There is no CMS Script that is good for everything. Pick and choose what works best for your current project. My 10 cents :)

I use Wordpress for blogs, Joomla for informational websites, Drupal for communities and for my web design clients I use Instant Update.

Jason Gordd

Hi people great post …..

31 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

I am just getting back into web design and have been getting a hang of wordpress but very basic stuff. What i have fond is wordpress is not that great for CMS as its more for blogging although you do get some great themes. I am after a simple CMS with no real coding although i can write html i dont really know PHP. Can anyone recomend a CMS for small sites, secure and really made for designres and not developers /coder.. I was looking at cushy but the whole ftp is not good

Thanks

Payam

@Payam Like you I thought that Cushy looked fantastic… It’s free, and all you have to do is add a few CSS classes to the editable areas plus you can apply it to existing sites.

But like most great ideas, there is a fatal flaw, you have to hand over your ftp info to Cushy.

I’m sure your details will be safe with Cushy, but somehow it doesn’t feel right to pass over your ftp info.

I’ve settled for Wordpress with a premium theme that is page based and not blog based and I’m happy with it.

If you find what you are looking for… let me know.

Keith Davis

32 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

Have you ever thought of trying a flat file system, for those that do not have access to a database, razorCMS is making great strides as an easy to use sharp and simple flat file CMS.

thanks

smiffy

Thanks for your note. I too am now using wordpress and some premium themes. Studio press seem to be ok and quote easy to change the CSS also they allow you to re sale. I just thought their must be better way. The word press back end view is quite complicated for clients hence I was looking for something really simple to look at. I had a look at joomla what a mess must have been built for people that talk CODE.

Also does anyone know where you can buy templates for your worpress and CSS, flash sites so we can use for our clients work. I know the web is full of sites selling templates but when you look at the terms of use it says personal use and cant use it for clients work if we charge which is bloody pointless.

Any ideas?

Payam

You can also have a look at Elxis CMS. Based out from Mambo days, more secure, more optimised. Worth checkin!

For very simple things, you may have a look at Get Simple CMS.

Web Design Greece

And if you liked TypoLight, you should like phpWcms - these are the only systems I know that build a

33 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

page using elements! Great idea!

Web Design Greece

Great research, it would help to label the paid systems.

Netpaths

How could you leave off Plone? Its one of the most established and mature Open Source web content management systems around.

-Matt

Matt Hamilton

Orbis CMS (http://www.novo-ws.com/orbis-cms) is another CMS for web designers. It’s especially suitable for small sites.

Johannes

34 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

I notice that Wordpress has just been voted the best open source CMS… I must say that I’m not surprised. My only concern with using Wordpress as a CMS for clients, is that they would still struggle with cropping and optimising images.

Does anyone have any experience of teaching clients to use Wordpress?

Keith Davis

Wordpress and Instant Update best two combinations! One for blogs and for clients.

Bob Marley

Linky Love. Thank you all.

1. » Reseña sobre 13 sistemas gratuitos para manejar contenido | DigiZen 2. CMS Open, quale scegliere? | Living in a zoo 3. Web デザインの専門家による 13 つのフリー CMS のレビュー | LIFE Script! from AvanHeart 4. iLibrarian » 13 Free Content Management Systems Reviewed 5. links for 2008-05-19 6. links for 2008-05-20 : rasheqrahman.com 7. Anonymous 8. » 13 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed Webcreatives 9. 13 opções de CMS para web designers. - 2.0 WEBMANIA - Portugal, a Web 2.0, o Mundo e a Internet 10. Seta Digital Blog » Blog Archive » links for 2008-05-20 11. links for 2008-05-20 « toonz 12. links for 2008-05-21 « Mandarine 13. 13 opciones gratis de CMS para crear diseños web profesionales - Carrero Bitácora de los Hermanos Carrero, David Carrero Fernández-Baillo y Jaime Carrero Fernández-Baillo. 14. 13 open source CMS’er | Morten Gade 15. Ugens links pÃ¥ del.icio.us (18.05.08 - 22.05.08) | Morten Gade 16. Links de la semana: 04/Mayo 17. El blog de LocoDiego » Listado de CMS ideales para cualquiera 18. 13 sistemas de gestión de contenidos (CMS) » Factorvital 19. links for 2008-05-30 « copula’s weblog 20. links for 2008-05-31 « Talkabout 21. recensione di 13 CMS opensource per un Web Design Professionale : technorati.it 22. Alessandro Baffa.it » Alessandro Baffa.it 23. What CMS should I use? - DesignersTalk 24. 13 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals | 2b.Px

35 sur 38 2009-12-21 13:49 14 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed http://blog.webdistortion.com/2008/05/17/13-free-cms-options-for-we...

25. Vote for this article at blogengage.com 26. links for 2008-09-13 27. Recent Links Tagged With "umbraco" - JabberTags 28. Web Design Resource List « Brenda Kato’s blog 29. webdistortion Reviews 13 free CMS Options for Web Design Professionals | I Do Blogs 30. PDL - Puta da Loucura | Sites, Web, Wordpress, » Review CMS - 12 CMS’s revistos 31. 13 besplatnih CMS opcija za web dizajn profesionalce | Kroativ 32. Tutorial on how to build your pro website or blog for free. | WebDesign Bureau of Mauritius 33. 13 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed « BradRow 34. Market research on a budget. 5 useful feedback tools. 35. Tips on Building a company website 36. Wordpress the Free CMS for your blog or website | Justin Parks | Social Media Spain 37. links for 2009-08-31 « Zobrist Consulting Group 38. 福神博客 » 13 free CMS options for Web Design Professionals Reviewed( 转) 39. 8 free and open source intranet solutions reviewed.