Content Management System, or CMS is an application used to manage news

easily so that users can publish, edit and delete articles from the back-end
admin system. HTML and other scripting language are not necessary to operate
a CMS, though having them will add more advantages.

Since we had looked into 22 open source PHP frameworks, i decided to do a

roundup of 20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems so that readers
who don’t have strong PHP knowledge can easily create their website using
free and open source CMS.

1. Wordpress

Wordpress is a powerful yet easy to use content management system. Initially

it was designed as a blogging platform. However, it slowly become popular and
can be customized into a powerful CMS with some tricks and plugins. I had
wrote an article about Wordpress SEO plugins and also talked about things that
you should know about Wordpress 2.8.
2. Drupal

Drupal is a free and open source modular framework and Content Management
System (CMS) written in PHP. It is used as a back-end system for many
different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large
corporate and political sites.

3. Joomla

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which

enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects,
including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular
Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that
is freely available to everyone.
4. Frog CMS

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user

interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and
permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.

5. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is a PHP CMS built with Sapphire framework, and it uses MVC
design pattern. you can view example sites that built with SilverStripe from the
official webpage.
6. Mambo

Mambo is a full-featured, award-winning content management system that can

be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications.
Although some Mambo sites had already migrated to Joomla, but i think i
should include Mambo as it is still a great CMS.

7. TYPOlight

TYPOlight is a PHP 5 CMS and it has a lot of features such as live update,
cross-browser CSS framework generator(IE7 compatible), templated based
front end output, use Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies. You should check out the
main page for more info.
8. Concrete5

Concrete5 is an open source content management system with simple

administaror interface. You can edit a web page live by using the editing
toolbar provided after you log in as administrator.

9. Textpattern Textpattern is yet another very popular content

management system. It requires PHP 4 to run and has a lot of
plugins that you can use for various customizations.
10. Symphony

Symphony is a CMS that uses XML/XSLT as its templating language.

Symphony lets you customize anything you like, from the website’s URL
structure to your publishing environment. For a non programmer, this CMS
might be complicated to learn.

11. MODx MODx is both a PHP application framework and content

management system. MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an
API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology. It is SEO friendly
CMS, and allows you to configure the meta content for each page.
12. Habari Project

Habari is a highly recommended open source blogging platform. It is being

written specifically for modern web hosting environment, and uses modern
object oriented programming techniques.

13. CMS Made Simple CMS Made Simple is highly customizable and
there are a lot of Modules for you to download. The
Documentation is pretty complete and easy to follow.
14. ImpressCMS

ImpressCMS is a community developed Content Management System. It is

highly scalable and is extremely useful for managing online communities.

15. Exponent CMS Exponent uses an intuitive and flexible content editing
system that allows website pages to be edited on the page as it is
displayed. you can download modules and themes from the official
website too!
16. MiaCMS

MiaCMS is a fork of the Mambo CMS. It has a powerful and extensible third
party entension system, and also a flexible site theming capabilities. MiaCMS
supports OpenID and can consider to be a stable and mature CMS.

17. Jojo CMS Jojo is a search engine friendly CMS. You will have SEO
friendly URL to your article, and Jojo will handle www/non-www domains
for you. Beside SEO friendly, Jojo also lets you extend the functionality by
adding product databases, blogs, image galleries or whatever takes your
 fancy.

18. TYPO3

TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise

purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability
while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and
modules.

19. Elxis CMS Elxis CMS comes with a lot of features such as Search
Engine Friendly URL, strong security, adjustable member list and
complete user profiles. Its automated tasks, modern design, AJAX
technology and multi-lingual interface helps you be more productive.

20. Chyrp

Chyrp is a lightweight blogging platform and it uses Twig as the

templating engine. The documentation is quite complete and you can
download a lot of useful modules from the main site.