In these days we may regularly come across the word WordPress a hundred times, when we are in the web. The term WordPress is associated with a blogging platform. The content management systems are easy way to build powerful websites and blogs. If you are very new to this filed, content management system (CMS) is a script/program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface. The main function of content management systems is to present information on web sites. The content includes text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, and code that displays content or interacts with the user. In short, a content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a content management system is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don’t have to.
Then why WordPress? WordPress powers more than 17% of the web, WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. Everything from simple websites, to blogs, to complex portals and enterprise websites, and even applications, are built with WordPress. You can get your copy of WordPress from here. But remember WordPress is not the only CMS system existing, there are a few hundreds of similar tools available. From a professional looking to simple fun stuffs are available. Here I am looking in to the CMS world to find the best alternatives to WordPress.
Textpattern
Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use CMS. Textpattern is is free and open source software.With its built-in simplicity, a blogger can start publishing in minutes. Designers and developers appreciate the ability to control all aspects of XHTML and CSS from the Admin interface, and with hundreds of plugins available, the power of Textpattern is easily extended. Textpattern uses built-in tags to determine how dynamic content should be retrieved and displayed. You have complete control over the content and presentation, making the CMS both simple and elegant to use.The admin interface is minimalist, efficient and clearly labeled. Designers can quickly produce well-structured, standards-compliant websites while authors can get on with publishing and editing content.
Drupal
Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. You can use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine.
Joomla
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. More than that, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Croogo
Croogo is a free and open source content management system, built on top of CakePHP framework.
GetSimple
GetSimple has the ability to perform a simple “Undo” on just about every action. Combined with an intuitive user interface makes for a great web editing user experience. Expand on the capabilities of GetSimple with the powerful yet simple plugin system. It’s easy to develop for and it having a growing repository of pre-written plugins.
Habari
(http://habariproject.org/en/)
While there are a number of technical reasons that highlight the differences and advantages Habari has over other blogging packages, a major component of what makes Habari different is its community participation model. Users who demonstrate a level of quality contributions to the project are granted more privileges within the project.
concrete5
Concrete5 is a content management system that is free and open source.
Movable Type
Movable Type is a professional publishing platform.
FlatPress
Flatpress is a blogging engine that saves your posts as simple text files. You don’t need any SQL database to store your texts.
Wolf CMS
Wolf CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Like other, it also comes in two package formats. You can download either the stable or release candidates when available. If you really want the cutting edge version, the most recent code is always available from Github.
sNews
sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. sNews is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface. sNews consists of only one core engine file, one independent template file and its accompanying CSS stylesheet file, plus an .htaccess file that makes all URLs search engine friendly.
Which Content Management System you are using for your site? Why you choose such a CMS? Can you recommend some other CMS that can compete with WordPress? what are the features you are looking for in a CMS?
