Content management system
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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:
- User input
- users don't need to have HTML expertises, WYSIWYG or WiKi syntax solutions are implemented to help the users to create or to edit the content of a web page
- Content management
- manage the content and easely structure it
- Content architects can configure structure and menus of the system. This is not always easy and various systems differ a lot. Some only provide minimal functionality, other a series of "mini-cms" tools.
- Layout and Contents
- separate the structure of a web page from its content
- easy installation of a CMS (usually through a web-based installer)
- default templates for the graphical appearance, possibility to download other templates.
- easy change of the templates (directly via CSS files)
- Administration
- easy administration of the website via a web interface
- multi language support for administration tools
- sometimes possibility to store the different versions of an edited page
- user and permission management
- Groupware
- Most systems have groupware modules (like forums, and file sharing)
- Extensibility
- Possibility to extend the system with modules / plugins. Usually there is a documented API
Resources
- OpenSourceCMS: you can try a CMS before installing it
- cms matrix: useful to compare the features of different CMS
Open Source Softwares
Small CMS
We call most of these C3MS (since they allow to manage content, communities and collaboration. A lot of portals are built with these systems. Therefore a CMS is also some kind of portalware.
- 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
"Web 2.0" systems
Not sure what that means :)
Special purpose systems for education
Not that these are the only ones ...