Content management system

Introduction

A content management system (CMS) is a system that permits to create and to organise the creation of content. Generally a CMS is a multiuser web based application that manages a website.

Generally all CMS have different common features:

• users don't need to have HTML expertises, WYSIWYG or WiKi syntaxt solutions are implemented to help the users to create or to edit the content of a web page;
• separate the structure of a web page from its content
• manage the content and easely structure it
• easy publish the content
• easy structurate the content
• easy installation of a CMS
• default templates for the graphical appearance, possibility to download other templates.
• easy change the templates (directly via CSS files)
• easy administration of the website via a web interface
• multi language support for administration tools
• sometimes possibility to stock the different versions of an edited page
• multiusers

Resources

• OpenSourceCMS: you can try a CMS before installing it
• cms matrix: useful to compare the features of different CMS

Open Source Softwares

• slash: originally used for slashdot. Perl & MySQL
• phpnuke & postnuke: PHP & MySQL
• drupal: PHP & MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQL server...
• ezPublish: PHP
• XOOPS: PHP
• midgard: PHP
• plone: Python/Zope
• typo3: PHP and MySQL
• Mambo Server: PHP and MySQL
• Joomla: fork of mambo server. PHP and MySQL
• SPIP: PHP and MySQL
• CMSimple Content Management: no database needed, PHP powered

Please note, that wikis, blogs and portals are also included into the CMS family. This page will only show some examples of CMS used for managing a dynamical website.