Top Five Open Source Content Management Systems
It's always so difficult to make a "top" anything list. There are so many good candidates and you know that no matter which ones you choose, you're going to make somebody unhappy. My publisher asked me to write a top five list, and since he makes sure I get paid, I like to keep him happy. I tried to divide it up between enterprise, web and blog platforms. So here, in no particular order, are my top five content management systems...
Comments
By Brice Dunwoodie (CMSWire.com) | Posted 1:26pm | October 28, 2009
Hey Ron,
Why stop at 5 when one can have 20? Check out our recent report about the 20 dominant open source content management systems (see http://www.cmswire.com/downloads/cms-market-share/).
By Anonymous | Posted 3:00pm | October 28, 2009
Reads more like theTop 5 most popular. There are others out there with stable code and unique features that are in limited use. They will remain in obscurity as all the lists and developers choose their CMS based on the same protocol as a tag cloud.
By rmiller | Posted 3:46pm | October 28, 2009
Hey Brice:
Unfortunately I'm limited by having only me and not a staff of people to help out. We hope to expand to 10 next year though. 20 is going to be a stretch for me I think.
Ron
By rmiller | Posted 3:47pm | October 28, 2009
I'm not sure it's the most popular. It's ones I'm familiar with and have some expertise in because I've covered them and I'm aware of their capabilities. I know there are lots and lots of possibilities, which is why I invited readers to add ones they think I missed and I really would welcome that type of feedback.
Ron
By loveTopFives | Posted 5:50pm | October 28, 2009
I think that only Idealware.org and CMSWatch have done a nice, thorough job of examining the various open source CMS tools out there, but even they, like you, have included Wordpress, which is strictly a blogging tool. Can we have an agreed upon understanding of what a CMS tool is for these comparisons please, otherwise Notepad must be the king of CMS tools, since everyone using Windows has it (greatest 'market share' of a CMS) and you can 'create themed web pages with it', as you can with Wordpress and Joomla.
Also, please note that whitehouse.gov being on Drupal isn't earth-shattering open source news. Plone has been running CIA.gov, FBI.gov, NASA, NOAA, Navy, at DoD, and other gov sites for some time - those orgs just don't tend to do PR releases indicating the technology they are using, but you can do a view source on the pages or look at the .css file names.
Plone and Drupal are really the only true 'Web CMS' tools in the bunch you've reviewed (or haven't in the case of plone), as Alfresco is really just a web DMS (Document Management System) and acts as an MS Sharepoint replacement (which is fine, but isn't for web content authoring/publishing/approval/auditing/versioning/etc.)
Joomla and Wordpress allow you to easily create pages and theme a site, install some add-ons to hook in your twitter feed or whatever, but aren't true CMS tools with any kind of workflow, auditing, versioning/rollback, etc.
You do properly point out that Nuxeo is better than its popularity. Same is true for ezPublish.
The CMS-Wire report referred to above is not much better than this quick summary/ranking here. It just dresses up BS stats that any 7th grader could collect from Google or Alexia (number of downloads as indicator of quality of a CMS? Come on, man. You guys should do better.)
By rmiller | Posted 6:20am | October 29, 2009
I would have to disagree. A blogging platform, especially one as comprehensive as WordPress is in fact a CMS. I've seen many people use it to manage a web site that includes a blog, so you may not see it that way, but there are lots of examples of people using it that way. But even for managing a pure blog, it's a CMS. You manage your content, your underlying site and so forth. We may disagree on the scope of the term, but in my book it is a CMS.
I can't speak to how CMS Watch or CMS Wire conduct their surveys. Mine I can tell you had nothing to do with any stats. It was just my opinion based what I know about these tools. I don't claim to have any formula or way of choosing them beyond my gut and my own opinion
Thanks for the long note. I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Ron
By Joksim | Posted 11:52am | October 29, 2009
I have worked with Joomla, a litle Drupal, but in my opinion, you've forgot Typo3. It is EXCELENT!!
By Jackson | Posted 4:00pm | November 4, 2009
I completely agree with loveTopFives with regards to what should be labeled as a CMS and the over usage of that label for such blogging tools as Wordpress and Joombla.
For those interested, a hidden Gem in the Java World exists and goes by the name Magnolia (www.magnolia-cms.com). =)
By ADifferentAnonymous | Posted 6:19pm | November 11, 2009
I appreciate that you encouraged discussion about a topic that you know is bordering on holy-war allegiance, but must also cast my vote alongside 'loveTopFives'.
I've also tested most of these apps and several others for addressing 'real' content management requirements, and while the others did have some cool functionalities, they just could not compete as a 'CMS' app, and so belong in a wholly different category (like blogs).
