What is The Best Open-Source CMS?

I have tested several Content Management Systems and Drupal has shown itself to be the best from many angles. There are several great CMS applications, but there are several features that make Drupal far superior, while there are also some problems at the core that still need to be addressed for the CMS to really take a hold on the market.

Drupal

Drupal is probably the most useful CMS that is on the market today, but it is open source and thus FREE to download and use under the GPL. There are other content management systems that you have to pay for that do not deliver as much functionality to your visitors as Drupal, and they would like to charge you for it. Drupal has gained a huge following and has become the official CMS for many of the hottest sites on the web. It may not look like it, but Drupal is slowly taking over the internet. Huge companies like AOL, Sony, and even NASA have started using Drupal for their websites and will probably bring great new modules to community. Drupal is my top CMS of choice and would recommend it to anyone.

*Update - Even the Whitehouse.gov website is using Drupal now.

Wordpress

Wordpress is great for running a blog, but it's limits are found soon after that. There is really no good forum plugin that is available for Wordpress, and most of the plugins are geared for social networking. For a blog, these things are great, but if you are trying to make a serious step towards a community portal, Drupal can run circles around Wordpress. Wordpress still has some great plugins and I will not knock it, but there are limits to it's capabilities to be a full on CMS. Wordpress is a great piece of software, and I recommend it to anyone looking to make a solid blog, with features for your readers, but nothing much other than that.

PHPNuke

PHPNuke burst onto the scene as the next greatest thing to hit the web in terms of an Open-Source CMS. It was a very formidable content management system, but setup was not for the faint at heart. I had tried several tries at installing this CMS to no avail, and eventually got bored of trying to set it up. On the flip side, Drupal is installed very easily as the database tables are built dynamically by the install and no database setup is need except for entering the connection info. Overall PHPNuke has been the most difficult to setup out of the CMS programs I have tried. I have seen many community portals that use PHPNuke, but I guess it is just out of my league. It really looks like a great CMS, but if you can't get it installed easily, what is the sense.

Joomla!

Joomla seems to be a newer CMS, and I have not had time to test it yet. I have been on several websites that use the software and they seem to be somewhat stable and perhaps have some nice plugins/addons available. I will update this article after more research has been done on Joomla. While they were awarded the best PHP open source CMS in 2007, just ahead of Drupal, I was introduced to Drupal first so have grown some affection to the project.

E107

This is another CMS that I have not tested yet, but I have worked with webmasters who do use this CMS platform. It seems to be somewhat useful, but does not seem to be as robust as Drupal. I will have to also test this CMS software more to note the bonuses and weaknesses to the Drupal CMS.

Mambo

Mambo is another newer CMS that has gotten much positive press. I will be doing some more research on this CMS to see how it compares to Drupal and update this article once again.

XOOPS

I have also dealt with several webmasters who use xoops and will be getting their opinions on the platform. I personally have not run it, but I will do some testing as well as gather as much other info as possible to update this article with more information on this CMS.

The CMS is the future of website development

True, hand-coded HTML pages are becoming a thing of the past. One of the reasons I switched to Drupal was because I could not keep all of my pages updated, and created new content fast enough by coding the pages by hand. A CMS takes care of that for you by building the pages dynamically for you and make things a whole lot easier. Other great features include being able to add plugins/addons and building themes. There is usually a big community of developers behind these addons and themes for each CMS that look to provide the best capabilities for their platform. You will see that content management systems will continue to become the dominant force in website development in the future. Check out Drupal to get the most out of your open source CMS.