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A Content Management System is a software application that assists with the creation, editing, and publishing of content on a website. Typically, a Content Management System (CMS) provides an administrative interface (often called the “back-end”) for adding and editing content, a database for storing content and other data, and a templating system for displaying the content on a website or in other formats (like an RSS feed). Content Management Systems can be generalized solutions, capable of handling many different types of content, or they may be specialized on a particular form of content, like blog posts or photo galleries.
Generalized Content Management Systems
The “Big Three”
The following three CMS systems account for the vast majority of content-focused websites, together accounting for over 60% of the content management system deployments on the internet. All three are Open Source projects written in PHP and using the MySQL database management system.
WordPress — Originally conceived as blogging software, and still maintaining a preference for a dated-post style of presentation, WordPress is not just the most popular Content Management System in use, it is one of the most popular and commercially successful Open Source development projects in the world. The huge user and developer base means there are an extremely large number of themes and plugins, both free and premium, and there is an abundance of online help and tutorial material available. The variety of themes and plugins makes it extremely customizable, capable of handling almost any content-driven use case.
Drupal – The most popular CMS that doesn’t carry an inherent bias towards blog posts as the primary form of content (though it can be used for blogs). Drupal is inspired, in part, by the GNU/Linux project, and so it has a small “kernal” of functionality and almost everything — even basic features used by everyone — are built as separate modules. This means that there is no technical difference between core functionality and added “plugin” functionality, which helps to put all types of content features on equal footing. Drupal can be launched and used by anyone, but it is certainly geared toward people with tech skills who want to create a fully-customized deployment.
Joomla — Joomla provides the inherent flexibility of Drupal with the ease of use of WordPress. This makes it a very attractive option for many medium-size enterprise deployments where WordPress is not seen as generally powerful enough, but the organization simply doesn’t have the ongoing technical resources (staff) to maintain a complicated Drupal site.
Other notable Content Management Systems
- Movable Type — Because the most popular content management systems are all Open Source, there are not very many commercially successful closed-source (proprietary and commercial) CMSes on the marker. Movable Type has been beating the odds on this point since 2001. Its advanced features and slick, user-friendly admin design makes it popular with many commercial bloggers and corporate websites.
- Tiki Wiki — Tiki Wiki may be the most unusual content management system in the world. It is a community-based Open Source project (meaning, not connected to a corporate entity), and it has the stated goal of being the CMS with the most features. It does everything, and is constantly being added it. It is the exact opposite of the GNU/Linux-style philosophy of Drupal: rather than everything being a module, everything is in the core. There are no plugins. The software, and the community that develops it, is fascinating. However, it may not be terribly practical for business purposes.
- ExpressionEngine — A moderately popular proprietary CMS built on top of an open source core (CodeIgniter).
- Concrete5 — Beautiful new CMS with a focus on the user experience. Combines the power of a CMS with the ease-of-use of a site builder, and the best contemporary design styles.
- e107 — Very simple CMS based on Twitter Bootstrap.
- LifeType — Notable for its use of Subversion (a version control system used by software developers) as its content-storage engine.
Other Content Management Systems
- BIGACE — PHP-based CMS that hasn’t had a new release since 2012.
- Coranto — Flat-file database CMS written in Perl.
- Kentico — ASP.NET CMS that includes ecommerce, social networking, and other features for creating an integrated online brand presence.
- MemHT
- Plone — Relatively popular CMS primarily used in enterprise deployments.
- Sitefinity — ASP.NET CMS with a slick, modern interface and a focus on enterprise needs, including both internal and external content.
- CMS Made Simple — PHP-based CMS with a fanatical devotion to simplicity.
- Contao
- Dotclear
- Geeklog
- MODx
- MS DotNetNuke
- PHP-Fusion
- PHP-Nuke
- phpwcms
- phpWebSite
- Pligg
- pMachine
- PostNuke
- PyroCMS
- Serendipity
- SilverStripe
- Siteframe
- TYPO3
- Umbraco
- XOOPS
Defunct Content Management Systems
The following CMS applications are no longer under active development.
- Nucleus — Replaced by the LMNucleus project.
- Mambo — Mambo was once the most popular CMS on the planet, running over 40% of websites on the internet. Its user and developer based dried up after a bizarre copyright incident around 2005. Joomla is a derivative project, beginning as a fork of the Mambo code base and including a number of Mambo developers on its original team.
Find hosting with these features in CMS
See also: Pligg, Concrete5, Serendipity, PostNuke, e107, Dotclear, MS DotNetNuke, Siteframe, LifeType, MODx, pMachine, SilverStripe, Movable Type, Umbraco, PHP-Fusion, Contao, PyroCMS, Sitefinity, Kentico , Coranto, BIGACE, Plone, ExpressionEngine, MemHT
