What is A Content Management System?

"A content management system (CMS) is a computer program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content on a web site as well as maintenance from a central page. It provides procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or automated cascade. The core function of Content Management Systems is to present information on web sites. CMS features vary widely from system to system. Simple systems showcase a handful  B2B Order Management System of features, while other releases, notably enterprise systems, offer more complex and powerful functions."

OK, that's Wikipedia's version of content management system and yes, I have to agree that it's a pretty good definition. There are a lot of CMSs available both commercial and non commercial. And really you can do a whole lot of things by using a free or non commercial content management system. Take a look at the list below and some of these might be familiar to you (Joomla, WordPress) and some might not. I'll try give a comprehensive analysis of each and every CMS and It's up to you to decide which is best. Please don't forget to give us your opinion about the article and let us know if there are any more free content management systems that you think should be in this list and why?

WordPress

This was introduced as a PHP-based blogging platform but now it has evolved in to a state-of-the-art publishing platform. WordPress is easily the most accessible and probably the most commonly used content management system out there. It is free and userfriendly and easily understandable at the same time. The best thing about WordPress is that it takes simply seconds to get it installed and up and running. And with the huge user community itay of plugins, widgets and themes for free.

Joomla

Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. Most probably the best overall content management system out there.It is simple - it is extremely customizable, suitable for pretty much anything. Millions of websites are running on this simply because of its ease-of-use and extensibility. Joomla is often used by small and medium businesses, large organizations, non-profits and individuals. Joomla has an admin section which is highly user friendly and this too has a huge community so that this too has a large set of options from templates and styles to adding feeds, content blocks, menu management tools and more, Just take a quick trip to Joomla site and you'll see why this is a popular choice.

Drupal

Another popular free and open source CMS, And like many of the other content management systems listed here, Drupal can be scaled for personal blogs or enterprise mega-sites, and like WordPress or Joomla this also has thousands of modules that can be added to increase functionality. And this too has a huge and active community.

Drupal is probably the most technicaly advanced pure content management system since both worpress and Joomla are blog centic.. But that doesn't mean Drupal doesn't have those cool blog functions such as profiles, user blogs, forums and comments.

The best thing about Drupal is that it's ACL capability, stability, scalability, and reliability. And it can be installed remotely on any server.

The drawback of this is that it has relatively low number of plugins, including templates, so that it restricts both appearance and functionality for a certain level. And again the admin section is not that userfreindly if you doesn't have some IT background. So if you are an IT professional B2B Order Management System  and if you still like to add some codings to your website, this is the best solution for you.

SilverStripe

SilverStripe is again a well modularised PHP5 flexible open source Content Management System. This is quit new but it's getting a lot of attention lately. SilverStripe has a simple and rich feature set for content editing. Silverstripe has a framework called Sapphirewhich is a Model View Controller (MVC) framework. With that the developers can extend the functionality and to customize the base in a straight forward manner. The content editing is so user friendly that even a novice can easily understand how to use it.

The problem with this is the lack of available learning materials. But I believe that it will resolve with the time.But for the time being, I will not recommend SilverStripe for a large web site with a huge amount of content.

CMS Made Simple

This is another Simple and free content management system which has a recursive acronym, and it's extremely easy to use and learn. Featurwise this is not that comprehensive and I can't compare this with some popoular CMS such as as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, but it's a very good alternative for small scale business. You can install this CMS Made Simple, and have your website up and running in a matter of minutes.