Best free website content management system

Debs102

Hi

Setting up a new website for a charity I work for, but with little / no budget. We curretly use an outdated version on Joomla - I like it, but what other free CMS are out there that I could utilise for this?

Looking for more than a basic freebie website - have got hosting and a domain set up for the old site which I want to switch when the new site is built. I don't expect all bells and whistles you would get with an expensive site; I can do XHTML/CSS & template building etc.

Cheers

Debs

BlueC

Depends what functionality you need from the CMS? Joomla is good as it is very flexible, sometime too much so if all you need is simplicity. Drupal is similar to Joomal. I very much like Wordpress, which strictly speaking is a blogging platform but it can work admirably as a CMS too with a few choice plugins. All of these are open source.

The following site has an extensive list of open source CMS and most have live demos so you can try them before bothering to download/install them.

http://php.opensourcecms.com/

Good luck!

clarksonwayne

I've used Joomla (which is the site in my footer) and wordpress both have been good to me. You might find which ever you go with that you'll need to payout a little to get the exact add ons you want. Most of the modules I got for free for my Joomla! site now need to be paid for.

andrew_uk

Try Concrete5 it is much better than having to use Wordpress etc

Benet

I can't recommend Wordpress highly enough. If you know the basics of design as you say with HTML and CSS skills, Wordpress' templating engine makes it really easy to integrate your own design. Whilst Wordpress is seen by many as primarily a blogging system I use it for several sites, and it does have the flexibility to offer far more than just blogging. Also, the vast amount of plugins available make it infinitely extensible.

Its totally free, and chances are your webhost already offers the option to install it automatically using Fantastico (look in your web control panel ) and if not, the installer for it is super easy anyhow, and can be downloaded at http://wordpress.org/

PS. Concrete5 is nice as Andrew says, but I do prefer the community base of Wordpress.

steve1980

+1 for Wordpress. I have made 10 sites using it due to it's ease of use for clients after the inital design.

wonka

Another vote for Wordpress. I've built a couple of websites for charities using Wordpress, including one that needed Russian translations of articles.

paddyrg

Wordpress -> Joomla -> Drupal -> cakephp -> Django -> Custom development.

In approximate increasing order of power and complexity. If you outgrow one, look to the next up the list, but expect it to be a bigger job!

ehlo

If you're already familiar with Joomla then it makes sense to stick with it and just upgrade to the latest version (which is a very easy process ). Joomla had pretty good support and documentation the last time I was playing with it.

Of course there are plenty of alternatives. The comparison site that BlueC has recommended is definitely worth a look!

I would disagree with using Wordpress as a CMS. While it works well there are much better lightweight platforms which actually designed to be a CMS (rather than a blogging platform which is being shoehorned into another role!). Wordpress also seems to have a poor security history.

Its totally free, and chances are your webhost already offers the option to install it automatically using Fantastico

I used to be on the support team for a forum that is included with Fantastico. Sadly it is far from fantastic! Often the host doesn't update it in a timely fashion so users are using outdated software as soon as they install a script. They also frequently mess up the upgrade scripts which will subtly break things later on!

DJBenz

I'll add another vote for Joomla. I currently use it on a site that has well over 1000 articles and it copes very well. As ehlo said above, if you're happy with what Joomla does and you know your way around the admin side, why bother to change to a different system?

Update the one you have and stick with what you know.

Benet

ehlo wrote: »

I would disagree with using Wordpress as a CMS. While it works well there are much better lightweight platforms which actually designed to be a CMS (rather than a blogging platform which is being shoehorned into another role!). Wordpress also seems to have a poor security history.

I used to be on the support team for a forum that is included with Fantastico. Sadly it is far from fantastic! Often the host doesn't update it in a timely fashion so users are using outdated software as soon as they install a script. They also frequently mess up the upgrade scripts which will subtly break things later on!

You'd actually be amazed what you can do with Wordpress, its incredibly flexible. At least, in my experience it has been. As for the security issues, I've never noticed anything particularly out of the ordinary. Sure, there have been issues but they've always been patched incredibly quickly in my experience.

With regards to Fantastico, its only ever as good as the person maintaining it. I would install with Fantastico, and then forget about it, and instead use the built in upgrading system from within Wordpress itself. Breaks less frequently that way!