An Overview of Current Content Management Systems
We will discuss:
WordPress.com: Built for Blogging
- A hosted, managed service
- No ads
- Space limits
- No plugins
- One of many blog services online
You get a simple interface and an abundance of themes, but you can’t customize your own theme. This is a good place to start a small blog, learn the ropes and see what it’s like to deal with an input interface.
Choose WordPress.com because:
- You want a simple hosted solution
- Your primary interest is blogging
WordPress.org: a “Blog Tool and Publishing Platform”
- Extremely flexible: plugins, themes, etc.
- Built with PHP
- A downloadable package, which you’ll set up on your own hosted space
- You can find helpful VARs to host and set it up for you
- Expand beyond blogging to true content management
With a simple user interface, voluminous support forums and extensive documentation, most reasonably skilled web users can set it up themselves. Particularly note the search engine optimization (SEO) tools.
ExpressionEngine: “Power and Flexibility”
- Built with PHP
- Uses the CodeIgniter framework (http://codeigniter.com/), which means if you do PHP, but not hugely complex PHP, you can extend ExpressionEngine easily.
- Commercial: $99, $149, $299
- Good community forums
- Designer-friendly
Features:
- Basic eCommerce
- Membership management
- Search function
- RSS
- Mailing lists
- Forums
- Photo galleries
- Slick control panel
- Templates: fully customizable
- Free and paid plug-ins
Plone: the Transformer
- Open source and free
- Built with Python
- Built on the Zope platform (http://www.zope.org/)
Features:
- Content management and publishing
- Forums
- Wikis
- User and group authentication and management
- Search function
- Version control
- Workflow management
- Nice in-site editing for content creators
- Themes: roll your own, download a free one, or buy one
- Lots of plug-ins
- A large and active developer community
- Good support and documentation
- Very good web standards support
- Accessibility compliant
Plone is huge. Python is a religious choice. Zope is a commitment. But if you want the maximum features, and are a deep coder ready to deal with a complex platform, Plone is likely the platform for you.
Drupal: Evolve Any Direction
Here’s the page that says it all: “Is Drupal the right tool for the job”
http://drupal.org/node/346217
Notice that link: it says “geek.”
Joomla!: Lots and Lots of Goodies
Like Drupal, Joomla! is developer-friendly, but it’s also designer-friendly as well.
- Many, many modules are available
- The developer community is active and friendly
- Many, many templates are available, both free and for-pay – this is one of the nicest things about Joomla!
Features:
- Blogging
- Subject/Category/Article organization
- Polls
- User and group login and management
- RSS
- Integrated help system
- Sophisticated eCommerce
Joomla! provides a nice balance of design and coding customizability. There’s such a large developer community that finding a VAR or custom coder or designer is easy.
MojoMotor: “The Publishing Engine That Does Less!”
- Built with PHP
- Uses the CodeIgniter framework (http://codeigniter.com/), like ExpressionEngine
- Commercial: $49
- A simple framework that uses no control panel – you edit pages directly in the page
- You can migrate your content to ExpressionEngine if you outgrow its functionality
Need it simple, fast, cheap and good-looking? This is a great little platform.
phpBB: “Free and Open Source Forum Software”
Specifically dedicated to the concept of user forums.
MediaWiki: the Dedicated Wiki
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
Used Wikipedia? Then you already know what it is.