A Content Management System, or CMS, is an application used to create and maintain web content. This content can include HTML pages, images, and video. The difference between a website builder like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver and a CMS is that a CMS is set up to allow users with no knowledge of programming or markup languages to produce and manage content with relative ease. A user is set up and administers the site through a web-based interface that looks very much like what one might find with popular office productivity tools such as Microsoft Word and Excel.

While there are many commercial options that cater to larger corporate clients, the past few years has seen a boom in the number of free open-source Content Management Systems that appeal to smaller businesses or individuals. One of the benefits to using an open-source CMS, besides the cost, is that most of the popular ones have large user communities who regularly develop new features and help troubleshoot any problems.

I started working with Mambo and WordPress years ago and saw the benefits of using a CMS almost immediately. Here was a set of standards and templates brought into the chaotic world of site design. And a CMS allows multiple users to own and edit their content, which is ideal in a larger office with different departments. Along the way I worked with several other Content Management Systems, such as Joomla, Drupal, and ExpressionEngine.

These are all open source, and obviously much more information can be found at their respective sites. But here is a small summary of each:

Mambo

One of the elder statesman of the open-source CMS group, Mambo is an award-winning application that is written in the PHP programming language and uses MySQL to store data. Mambo has been around since 2001 and over 7 million people have downloaded it in that time. Ease of installation, a user-freindly interface, and great flexibility are some of Mambo’s selling points. Being a more established Content Management System also means that the Mambo support community is more experienced, which is a big plus.

Joomla

Joomla first came into being in 2005 as an offshoot of Mambo. Since then the two systems have gone their separate ways, and Joomla has done a lot to become well established and very highly regarded in its own right. Joomla has a large user community with the official forum reporting over 250,000 members. The core application allows for modular extension and integrations to be made easily. This has lead to the development of what are called Plugins, which are extensions to the Joomla CMs that enhance its functionality. Some examples include message boards, image slideshows, and shopping carts. Users can “plug in” these modules to the Joomla CMS without having a lot of technical know-how. There are currently over 4,000 Plugins available for Joomla.

Drupal

Another older, more well established CMS is Drupal. It has been around almost as long as Mambo, and has recently seen its popularity increase greatly. Like the others, Drupal was designed to allow new features and custom behavior to be added with relative ease. Drupal boasts many well-known brand names and not-for-profit organizations who now use it to manage their web content.

ExpressionEngine

This is a newer CMS that is gaining in popularity. It is available in a free “Core Version”, and in both “Personal” and “Commercial” versions after paying a one-time fee. ExpressionEngine is intended to be simpler to use than other Content Management Systems; for example, it requires no knowledge of PHP, and has extensive online documentation.

WordPress

Perhaps best known as a blog publishing application, WordPress also functions as a suprisingly rich CMS. WordPress uses a templating system, which includes Widgets that can be rearranged without editing PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed and switched between. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced site customizations.