Open Source Content Management Systems

Every publishing company with an online presence (and what publishing company doesn't have at least a minimal online presence?) requires some sort of content management system (CMS). CMS is software that uses a database to keep track of every bit of data on a business' website. CMS are also used to create, edit, repurpose, and search the website's content.

These systems are often called Web CMSs to distinguish them from enterprise CMS, which are systems that manage an organization's internal content. (A popular example of an open source enterprise CMS is Alfresco, which is available in both free and subscription versions.)

Small publishers have a wide variety of CMS applications to choose from, both open source and proprietary. This website focuses on open source CMS, since small and start-up publishers are less likely to afford license fees of commercial programs. However, if you decide to go with a proprietary CMS, a quick web search will identify plenty of companies willing to take your money. For instance, this Wikipedia page provides a list (though by no means exhaustive)of available CMS offerings.

Another valuable resource for comparing CMS applications is www.cmsmatrix.org.

Looking at both of these sites, it's clear that there are lots of commercial CMS in the field, but there are also plenty of open source CMS applications around. The following table, created from data collected at www.cmsmatrix.org, provides a side-by-side comparison of four of the most popular OS CMS: Drupal, Joomla, Plone, and Typo3.

Reviewing this table, it becomes clear that many of these systems are more similar than they are different. The article Comparing Open Source CMSes: Joomla, Drupal and Plone provides a helpful list of similarities:

  1. Designers can develop structure and navigation for websites.
  2. Non-technical editors can create and edit content, create new pages, and alter menus.
  3. Designers can completely reconfigure the "look" of a page, so that the end users could never identify which CMS is being used.
  4. Designers have access to features similar to those of enterprise CMS applications, in that they can establish internal work flows that enable users to share documents while also designating which user can edit which document.
  5. They are adapted for search engine optimization (SEO).
  6. Large user/designer communities provide many plug-ins that improve the CMS functionality. In the case popular programs, these communities also answer questions and develop updates fairly quickly
  7. Programmers can work with the code so that the it works well with the unique needs of any organization.

While these program are good, publishers may require a bit from their CMS than the above generic features. As e-books and the slicing-and-dicing of XML-enabled content become standard in the industry, a publisher's CMS will need to be able to delivery this new content, customize content packages for individual customers, provide meaty RSS feeds, and do a countless host of other tasks. That's asking a lot, and in my research I didn't find anything with quite that much power.

A couple of commercial products are making strides in this direction (Libre Digital and Tizra). And given the pace of change, can it be very long before powerful open source options spring up? Developers are introducing and improving modules and plug-in all of the time, and it's only a matter of time before development catches up with this commercial software.

For some this wait and uncertainty may be frustrating, but for others it will look like an exciting opportunity to taking an active role in developing these new powerful platforms. Personally, I find it exciting.

The Frontrunners: Drupal vs Joomla

This website is a "Drupal shop." I designed this site with Drupal and have come to enjoy this program. So, there is a bit of bias.

But it's fair to note that Drupal completes with Joomla as the most prominent open source CMS application available. On the web, it is common to call Drupal and Joomla the "the Coke vs Pepsi" rivalry of open source. Both are fairly easy to use, based on PHP language, and boast a thriving developer and user community.

The primary differences between these programs involve ease of use and scalability.

Both programs may be easy to use once the systems are up and running, but Drupal can be very difficult for the newbie. Its terminology is quirky and specific to the Drupal community and a number of the processes are counter-intuitive. Meanwhile, Joomla has a reputation for being very easy to use out of the box.

On the other hand, Joomla lacks Drupal's sophistication. For small projects, Joomla might be the better choice. But once a project grows and starts requiring more advanced functionality, Joomla's simplicy starts to work against it. Drupal, however, was designed on a modular model that makes it endlessly scalable, and the countless number of available modules ensures that a Drupal-based CMS will grow wherever your organization takes you.

Finally, Drupal is known for its strong built-in collaboration and social network functions. For example, users can create content in the form of a "book," and other users can add to this book. Also, the permissions is as granular as you need to control access to the various parts of your website.

Other CMS

If Drupal and Joomla are the Coke & Pepsi of the open source world, if is important to remember that there are plenty of other "colas" out there.

Plone
This open source CMS is well suited for large, complex websites. Once it's running, it is relatively easy for non-technical editors to work with content. However, this is probably not an appropriate choice for smaller sites for a couple of reasons:

For this reason, this is probably not a suitable CMS product for a start-up publishing company with little capital. Perhaps you can revisit Plone once your company has grown into an international conglomerate.

Typo3
According to most accounts, Typo3 is best suited as a enterprise CMS with website and intranet capabilities. However, it has a strong developer/user community and a number of small organizations have had success using Typo3 as their web CMS.

Mambo
Mambo is actually an ancestor of Joomla. It features many of ease of use features that make Joomla so popular, but it's older and has been tested longer. That said, Joomla remains the better choice of the two. Although it has beenn around less time than Mambo, it can boast a greater number of add-ons (including new add-ons and those adapted from Mambo) and a more thriving developer community.

SilverStripe
Recently voted "Most Promising CMS" at the 2008 CMS Awards, SilverStripe is a powerful CMS tool that takes advantage of semantic elements of XHTML, making it a leading contender in the realm of Web 2.0. However, this also means that the program requires a high level skills for developers to work with it. For this reason SilverStripe is not recommended for the start-up publisher, even though the software itself is available for free. Most start ups will not have the budget or technical knowhow to set up Silver Stripe. However, it is a CMS to keep an eye on for future developments.

Rounding out the list of the more prominent open source CMS applications are the following:
phpNuke
PostNuke
e107

OpenSourceCMS.com is an interesting resource that aggregates demo versions of the programs discussed above (and many more). Give them a spin when you have the chance.

To Continue:
Go to Open Source Project Home
Go to Open Source Introduction
Go to Open Source Content Management Systems
Go to Open Source eCommerce
Go to Other Open Source Software