Creating website has become a fashion as well as a need today. Every business, be that a small firm or large enterprise, create one. Every now and then you see a new website popping up. But the main question which is in most of peoples’ mind is that is it difficult task and requires a lot of coding??
Let me answer this question……NO, creating a website is very easy. There are many open source CMS platforms which have made the process of making a website very simple. Now the question arises……
What is CMS?
CMS – Content Management System, is a powerful and painless way to manage all of your E-commerce, content management and business process needs. A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site. It is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site. In short you can say CMS is the web application used to manage information from the website without knowing any technical information about markup languages or web technologies.
There are many open source CMS software that are available on net for free to create your site. You have to select that suits you best. Below are top 5 CMS platform that are popularly used.
WordPress:
Word-press without any doubt is the best content management system, blogging platform and has healthy developer ecosystem with countless plug-ins which help you incorporate your efforts on your word-press based site. This popular CMS helps you create beautiful websites and blogs. It is free of cost so you can use freely as per your will and website requirements. It is based on PHP and MySQL. Its core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers with thousands of themes and plugins available for your use, so after installing it you do not need to go through the coding part, all you have to do is re-arrange the widgets and appearance of your web page and…..voila!!. Latest Version is available for download: Wordpres 3.3.1
Joomla:
Joomla is a dynamic portal engine and a content management system. This award winning CMS enables you to create powerful websites and online applications. This easy to use and extensible CMS is written on PHP which enables user to easily publish their contents on World Wide Web. It is also freely available to anyone and there are many themes and extension from which you can choose but the only problem with Joomla is that you’ll have to pay for most of the themes and plugins. Latest Version is available for download: Joomla 1.6
Drupal:
It is another open source content management system which supports a variety of websites ranging from personal web blogs to large community-driven websites. Drupal was designed by Dries Buytaert in 1999 and within a year because of its popularity it was made an open source. Drupal.org came online in 2001, and the Drupal community gained momentum in 2005. By using this free software package you can easily manage, organize and publish your content with as much customization as you desire. Latest Version is available for download: Drupal 7.10
Umbraco:
Umbraco is another open source CMS platform that enables the user to publish his content on the internet. It is written in C# built on Microsoft’s ASP .NET framework and is especially for .NET developers. It is generally not used for making personal blog but it is best suited for those companies which are running big sites. More than 110,000 sites trust Umbraco. Latest Version is available for download: Umbraco 4.7.1
Pligg:
Pligg is an open source CMS that you can download and use for free. Pligg is an open source CMS that allows you create your own social networking site which is combined with social bookmarking, syndication, blogging and a democratic editorial system that allows you to submit and vote articles i.e. it is specialized in Social networking community. It provides an Admin Panel where you can manage the feature to view and edit the user on their Pligg site. Other features are: Category Management, Modify Language, File and MySQL Backup, Modules, Configuration and RSS Importer. Latest Version is available for download: Pligg 1.2
Here I would like to conclude my article by saying that in a CMS; data can be defined as nearly anything from docs to movies, to texts, pictures and almost everything!
Thank you for posting our article 🙂
I have used three of them. WordPress is easy for beginners, but have less settings. Between Drupal and Joomla i would choose Drupal. For me Drupal easier.
Correction, Drupal’s latest version is 7.10 not 6.0.
/!\ “A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site. It is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site…”
Can’t be “top 5” CMSs since you left out ExpressionEngine
@Elias, thank you for point that out. Hope the ArtFans guy corrects it soon.
@PXLated, you are right! – There are other best CMS as well, agreed. Having said that, its always best to write a detailed blog post. Then follow up on that in the comments section. What do you say? I think it helps everyone know what majority of people thinks and why so.
Thanks everyone for commenting.
@Elias and @Adi, Thank you… updated 🙂
I’m going to have to say you left out DotNetNuke, but my opinion may be slightly biased.
@Fandy, Thanks mate 🙂
@Chris, I agree. DotNetNuke is a pretty good ones as well. Unfortunately, I simply cannot add all the good (great) CMS in to top 5 list.
The reason we’ve written this post here is just because YOU are the one to decide. For this reason only, I love comments section. Because IMHO, you get to know the opinion of everyone. It becomes more like a mini-forum where everyone reads the content and then adds their contribution and value to it.
@Everyone – Great to see so many good people here! 🙂 Thanks for the warm welcome, really.
Joomla is the best CMS ever !
I use joomla for 3 years … But WordPress Is perter for SEO ..
@ksaderby – I am in love with both Joomla and WordPress. My personal favorite is WordPress though. You can just about do anything with it, as you like.
With a few more custom additions, its a pretty solid framework for a new website or startup.
Exactly, but still the most popular are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Even though Joomla widely used, still many people prefer Drupal.
Alex, I agree. No one can beat those three content management systems. Truly.
Want to compare more cms software ? check out this business software database! Here 25 CMS software http://cms-software.thebsdb.com/
I think the title is wrong, shouldn’t be top 5. Anyhoo, for ease of use and usage, learning curve, that would be WordPress hands down. It’s easy. However, that does not make it the best. WP as various issues when you would like to code or develop something that is not supported by the template. As an ex wordpress user I gave up on it, because of what I wanted to implement. I won’t compare with Joomla though. I’m now using Joomla and I see its advantages over WP and what WP has over it but as a designer, I learned joomla in weeks and now whatever project I need to tackle is Joomla based. In the end it’s a personal opinion. I did try Drupal but turned the other way.