Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems
There are plenty of options when it comes to picking a content management system for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it’s built in, and who is going to be using it, it can be a nightmare trying to find the “perfect” CMS for a project.
However, some CMSs have a slight edge over the rest of the competition because of the usability of the software. Some are just easier to install, use and extend, thanks to some thoughtful planning by the lead developers. Here are 10 of the most usable CMSs on the web to use in your next project.
1. WordPress
What is there left to say about WordPress that hasn’t already been said? The PHP blogging platform is far and away the most popular CMS for blogging, and probably the most popular CMS overall. It’s a great platform for beginners, thanks to their excellent documentation
and super-quick installation wizard. Five minutes to a running CMS is pretty good. Not to mention the fact that the newest versions auto-update the core and plugins from within the backend, without having to download a single file.
For those users not familiar with HTML or other markup language, a WYSIWYG editor is provided straight out of the box. The backend layout is streamlined and intuitive, and a new user should be able to easily find their way around the administration section. Wordpres also comes with built-in image and multimedia uploading support.
For developers, the theming language is fairly simple and straightforward, as well the Plugin API.
The WordPress Community is a faithful and zealous bunch. WordPress probably has the widest base of plugins and themes to choose from. A great part about the WordPress community is the amount of help and documentation online you can find on nearly every aspect of customizing WordPress. If you can dream it, chances are it’s already been done with WordPress and documented somewhere.
2. Drupal
Drupal is another CMS that has a very large, active community. Instead of focusing on blogging as a platform, Drupal is more of a pure CMS. A plain installation comes with a ton of optional modules that can add lots of interesting features like forums, user blogs, OpenID, profiles and more. It’s trivial to create a site with social features with a simple install of Drupal. In fact, with a few 3rd party modules you can create some interesting site clones with little effort.
One of Drupal’s most popular features is the Taxonomy module, a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types.
Drupal also has a very active community powering it, and has excellent support for plugins and other general questions.
3. Joomla!
Joomla is a very advanced CMS in terms of functionality. That said, getting started with Joomla is fairly easy, thanks to Joomla’s installer. Joomla’s installer is meant to work on common shared hosting packages, and is a very straightforward considering how configurable the software is.
Joomla is very similar to Drupal in that it’s a complete CMS, and might be a bit much for a simple portfolio site. It comes with an attractive administration interface, complete with intuitive drop-down menus and other features. The CMS also has great support for access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID and even Gmail.com.
The Joomla site hosts more than 3,200 extensions, so you know the developer community behind the popular CMS is alive and kicking. Like WordPress, you can add just about any needed functionality with an extension. However, the Joomla theme and extension community relies more on paid plugins and themes, so if you’re looking for customizations, be ready to pay.
4. ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine (EE) is an elegant, flexible CMS solution for any type of project. Designed to be extensible and easy to modify, EE sets itself apart in how clean and intuitive their user administration area is. It takes only a matter of minutes to understand the layout of the backend and to start creating content or modify the look. It’s fantastic for creating websites for less-than-savvy clients that need to use the backend without getting confused.
ExpressionEngine is packed with helpful features like the ability to have multiple sites with one installation of software. For designers, EE has a powerful templating engine that has custom global variables, custom SQL queries and a built in versioning system. Template caching, query caching and tag caching keep the site running quickly too.
One of my favorite features of EE that is the global search and replace functionality. Anyone who’s ever managed a site or blog knows how useful it is to change lots of data without having to manually search and open each page or post to modify it.
ExpresssionEngine is quite different than other previously-mentioned CMS in that it’s paid software. The personal license costs $99.95, and the commercial license costs $249.99.
5. TextPattern
Textpattern is a popular choice for designers because of its simple elegance. Textpattern isn’t a CMS that throws in every feature it can think of. The code base is svelte and minimal. The main goal of Textpattern is to provide an excellent CMS that creates well-structured, standards-compliant pages. Instead of providing a WYSIWYG editor, Textpattern uses textile markup in the textareas to create HTML elements within the pages. The pages that are generated are extremely lightweight and fast-loading.
Even though Textpattern is deliberately simple in design, the backend is surprisingly easy to use and intuitive. New users should be able to find their way around the administration section easily.
While Textpattern may be very minimal at the core level, you can always extend the functionality by 3rd party extensions, mods or plugins. Textpattern has an active developer community with lots of help and resources at their Textpattern.org site.
6. Radiant CMS
The content management systems that we’ve listed so far are all PHP programs. PHP is the most popular language for web development, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook other popular web languages like Ruby. Radiant CMS is a fast, minimal CMS that might be compared to Textpattern. Radiant is built on the popular Ruby framework Rails, and the developers behind Radiant have done their best to make the software as simple and elegant as possible, with just the right amount of functionality. Like Textpattern, Radiant doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor and relies on Textile markup to create rich HTML. Radiant also has it’s own templating language Radius which is very similar to HTML for intuitive template creation.
7. Cushy CMS
Cushy CMS is a different type of CMS altogether. Sure, it has all the basic functionality of a regular content management system, but it doesn’t rely on a specific language. In fact, the CMS is a hosted solution. There are no downloads or future upgrades to worry about.
How Cushy works is it takes FTP info and uploads content on to the server, which in turn the developer or the designer can modify the layout, as well as the posting fields in the backend, just by changing the style classes of the styles. Very, very simple.
Cushy CMS is free for anyone, even for professional use. There is an option to upgrade to a pro account to use your own logo and color scheme, as well as other fine-grain customizations in the way Cushy CMS functions.
8. SilverStripe
SilverStripe is another PHP CMS that behaves much like WordPress, except has many more configurable options and is tailored towards content management, and not blogging. SilverStripe is unique because it was built upon its very own PHP framework Saphire. It also provides its own templating language to help with the design process.
SilverStripe also has some interesting features built in to the base, like content version control and native SEO support. What’s really unique with SilverStripe is that developers and designers can customize the administration area for their clients, if need be. While the development community isn’t as large as other projects there are some modules, themes and widgets to add functionality. Also, you’ll want to modify the theme for each site, as SilverStripe doesn’t provide much in terms of style, to give the designer more freedom.
9. Alfresco
Alfresco is a JSP is a beefy enterprise content management solution that is surprisingly easy to install. A really useful feature of Alfresco is the ability to drop files into folders and turn them into web documents. Alfresco might be a little bit more work than some of the other CMS and isn’t as beginner-friendly, it certainly is quite usable given the massive power of the system. The administration backend is clean and well-designed.
While Alfresco might not be a great choice for most simple sites, it’s an excellent choice for enterprise needs.
10. TYPOlight
TYPOlight seems to have the perfect balance of features built into the CMS. In terms of functionality, TYPOlight ranks with Drupal and ExpressionEngine, and even offers some unique bundled modules like newsletters and calendars. Developers can save time with the built-in CSS generator, and there are plenty of resources for learning more about the CMS.
If there is a downside to TYPOlight, it’s that it has so many features and configurable options. Even though the backend is thoughtfully organized, there are still a lot of options to consider. But if you’re wanting to build a site with advanced functionality and little extra programming, TYPOlight could be a great fit.
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Joomla 1.6 beats Drupal HANDS DOWN.
Orly?
Not sure about this, Drupal 7 shows a lot of promise.
Aah… The age old Drupal / Joomla argument raises its ugly head again.
Been working with Joomla for a few projects and I could say it was really a pain in the a$$. Heavy, bugs, IE compatibility issue with the component and module, Js conflict and bla3. Joomla 1.6 just another joke I guess. Try to mirroring Drupal’s user access level? Hmm. I would try to convert to Drupal as soon as I have time to do that and my company accept that.
Typo3 beats all of them and its not even in the list O.o
I would have to say concrete5 needs to be on this list.
It is super usable.
The other is Business Catalyst. I use it as one of our major products for the business and it is nothing short of a great product.
WordPress isn’t a CMS and shouldn’t be on this list.
CMS – Content Management System. WordPress does manage content on the web. So why should it not be on the list? And even if it has downsides, it truly is great in terms of usability.
Anything you can build on a “CMS”, I can build in WordPress easily.
I’ll throw in a vote for Unify by Unit Interactive, a very simple way for clients to handle content without logging into a CMS.
http://unify.unitinteractive.com/
Thanks for the roundup.
I think MODx should be on this list. It is really the best CMS i have ever used…
What happend to Modx?? I didn’t see it mentioned. What are your thoughts on it?
…no modx?
…that amazes me really…
…any CMS is usable, but how about “usable without grief”?
…perhaps that is why modx wasn’t listed, it is grief free in my opinion, so perhaps the heading needs to change to “usable, but grief ridden”…
MODx is grief free you say? Naa, wouldn’t say so.
Hello!
Would anyone say, what CMS from those which were brought up this topic is most understandable? Understandable in meaning of code.
What? No http://www.refinerycms.com ?
You should give S-Node a try. The only downside are the bugs, but other than that it’s great. Simple to use and great to develop on it (Smarty Template Engine, Zend Framework).
Great article.Very informative.I personally use http://www.indigloo.com.I will take a look at these cms systems also.
I read almost all 400 comments and marked down all the positive and negative “votes”, and subtracted the neg from the pos. Here are the top results with over 10 votes each after subtracting negative votes (not very scientific and probably miscounted). Joomla was the only negative total.
1. MODx (way out ahead)
2. Concrete5
3. WordPress
4. TypoLight
5. CMS Made Simple
6. Expression Engine
Thank you for conducting this informal survey. :) I already know how bewildering Joomla is for content managers to use, so not surprised it’s at the bottom. I had never even considered MODx, but now will definitely check it out.
And I think it’s important to note that when I think of a “usable” CMS, I mean usable for the people who will be updating the web site’s content, not for the person installing the software. When I build a site with a CMS, it’s because the content owner, usually a very non-techy person, wants to update the site himself. So what’s important to me is not how easy it is to add this or that module, but how easy is it to upload a picture or link to a PDF or add a data table.
Somebody is cllearly pushing Modx here using several alias’s. How do I know this? Check out the 3 consecutive posting above yours – all written within monuites or just a few hours of each other, whereas all other postings here have breaks of many days/weeks/months between them. As a newbie looking for my first CMS this sort of false promotion is a turn off. So I’m still looking for the best CMS for me, but I know it will not be Modx.
Joomla is good enough…..
ModX is a small, nothing corporate. Plus, it’s free. Why would anybody want to push it for any reason? The Thing is I’ve been using a few CMS platforms over the years and then at some point I didn’t feel the need to move on after I discovered it. It’s by no means perfect, but it’s less headache than Joomla, Drupal, WordPress. And it has a “front end editing tool” for your clients, which is cool, because most of them are really intimidated by admin panels.
Nice Post!
If you need a very very simple CMS, http://pulsecms.com/ is great. Like I said, it’s very basic. But it works quite well.
I like Alfresco. But there is no very popular CMS written in Java.
Thanks.
Is ModX free? how can you say its the best?
yea i think MODX should be in the list too, althought maybe the autor doesn’t mentioned due MODX is a cms framework more complex.
Does anyone know Liferay? What do you think? Why this manager is not in the list?
Atomic CMS is a very good content management system. and it’s free
http://atomiccms.com/
What no Umbraco, seriously check it out, It’s a fantastic and highly flexible CMS using the .Net frame work and XSLT. Best of all has no design constraints with 100% control of the html ouput.
Another vote for Umbraco. I’ve used WordPress, CMS Made Simple and MS Sharepoint (worst ever) and I’ve fiddled with Drupal and Joomla, but nothing compares to Umbraco in terms of the easy of use for the non-tech savy users and the flexibility that developers and designers have in building whatever they want within it.
Found new one http://couchcms.com/ hopefully will give some good tough time to EE coz they are providing it for free, got it compared at cmsmatrix.org wit ee. Must Tryout.
Nice compilation. Thanks for the article.
Here is another .net Cloud CMS solution which has almost 30+ built in modules.
For more detail : http://www.jaenovationcms.com
very very helpful information . I think this the best list about cms . Thanks.
Thanks for article. Interesting and informative. Much didn’t know. I will read is more often than article on this site.
Why is wordpress in the list?
A few days ago I discovered Symphony CMS (symphony-cms.com).
And I instantly fell in love with it for the following reasons:
1. Small in size – for me this is important as I often work on the go with bad connection;
2. Well written step by step beginner tutorials, with great explanation of the system’s concepts – all assembled in a logical manner (not just thrown as a documentation, without knowing where to start);
3. So easy and fast to install;
4. The perfect interface – nothing, truly nothing, that I don’t need;
5. Gives me control – I know what it’s doing, why it’s doing it and most importantly, I’m telling it to do it;
6. Gives me the tools and the guidance, it’s up to me to build what I need – it’s like building your dream house, instead of buying one that’s pre-built to fit the majority;
7. It actually lets me learn from it – the core files are so easy to read, well organized, with detailed comments of the code;
8. It got me to learn something new that I haven’t considered before, but I now realize how powerful it is (XML/ XSLT);
9. I get to write my css and html;
10. The extensions and utilities are so clean and well supported.
The list can go on, but the overall idea is that I’m in control. The environment is incredibly friendly and logical and I can build everything just exactly as I need it. Nothing more and nothing less. I’m grateful to the guys who’ve built it and taken the time to write the tutorials in such a manner, and I strongly recommend it to all those who love building websites.
I’d give my vote for MODX too, hands down a great CMS. I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 years dealing with Drupal development for clients and would NEVER recommend it, it’s a nightmare. Too many queries to the db and everything get turned into a db table, it kills servers and consumes for more memory than any of the other CMS’s. Every new Drupal version is not compatible with the previous, making upgrade another major concern. And it takes WAYYYY too many third-party modules to make a functional Web site.
MODX for a true CMS, or WordPress for a blog (or lighter-content CMS) stick with those and you’ll be much happier.
You forgot http://sayhellothere.com
CMS there much better than the others.
Question: Move of what I’ve read here is from a developers standpoint (I believe), but from an end-user’s standpoint what CMS solution has traditionally been the most comprehendible and easy to learn. We desire to spend less time teaching/supporting clients and more time developing. We have used Joomla, Drupal and WordPress of which WordPress has seemed to be move user friendly. I’m lead to believe from the posts (it seems) that Modx and WordPress are fair choices. Is this a fair assumption?
WordPress is the king, no doubt but i have heard people saying, Drupal is the next hot cake for ecommerce websites especially? is it true that its getting the place quickly ?
This is a great list but you’re missing two CMS, one id Modx and the other is a new kid on the block in PyroCMS.
I’m not a huge fan of most CMS’s to start with but when I installed PyroCMS, opened up the files and looked through them, I was amazed at how easy the code was. It was the fastest learning process I ever had with learning the template system. Within the first hour of looking through all the code, I understood how to build a theme no problem.
Second to note would be that you don’t even have to create modules, plugins or widgets if you don’t want too. It’s too easy to modify the CMS core for this kind of nonsense. I would only create modules for the community buy not for personal projects.
Great article and good luck!
TYPOlight is now called Contao
With the release of version 2.9.RC1 on June 6th, 2010, the project has been renamed to “Contao Open Source CMS”. Everything else remains the same.
The project website is now available at http://www.contao.org. Please update your links and bookmarks.
putting in my votes for Drupal, Joomla and WordPress…. Thanks for your article, didn’t know much about those other content management systems you mentioned.
A CMS should be built for the people who are going to edit it. This approach means the developer doesn’t have to spend tons of time helping the client w/ editing the website. If it’s intuitive, your CMS will bring you new clients via word of mouth from current clients. However, a good CMS also need to be easy to work with and extend for the developer. Only one does this. Concrete5. Super easy w/ the ease of use you’ve come to expect from your iPhone! Check it out, and help me earn some c5 karma to boot for sending you their way! Trust me, it’s worth 5 minutes of your time: http://www.concrete5.org/r/-/25595
WordPress stays on top…With so many good reasons.
Just wondering, is Drupal anyway near as easiest as WordPress?
Here is another good Codeigniter framework that is vary easy to implement with minimal set-up.
Try out FuelCMS at: http://www.getfuelcms.com
he he … the CMS war ;-)
Something tells me that we all know here that _ usability _ as it is the subject of that well documented post, depends on the user and what we are supposed to do (what kind of site).
So I have a supplementary question… what about Code-less, the “For dummies” kind of web publishing platform ? do we need them ? is Weebly or Wix a CMS ?
…
Small businesses are in the vast majority of the cases, looking for a way to present their activity on the web. This often means the best person to do create a presentation website is often :
_ 1 / in the company itself, knowing the job, the language, the clients..
_ 2/ knows nothing about web ‘design’, ‘code’ or ‘SEO’
_ 3/ will eventually want to be able update the content of the site very often at no cost
…
for now the best tool I found in that matter is http://www.simple-different.com
For who is that kind of tool ? A ridiculous learning curve, no need for code what so ever,
is simplicity lying to our clients ? or empowering them ?
…
There’s a great multitasking system EBIZ CMS to: ebiz.org.ua – the most inexpensive of clever CMS in the world!
WordPress and Joomla is the best…
wordpress is best bcoz it has rich plugins. and best for seo friendly
I’m surprised Directus didn’t make this list… I’ve been using it for years and it’s the most customizable free, open source CMS framework out there.
There are a lot of new promising CMS Framework in Dot NET community and <a href=”http://sageframe.codeplex.com/” title=”SageFrame”>Sageframe</a>, in my opinion, is the best of them. I’ve downloaded this component from <a href=”http://sageframe.codeplex.com/” title=”SageFrame”>CodePlex®</a> and have been using it for quite a time now and am very much fascinated by the features it exhibits. Through available modules and custom templating, any novice can turn SageFrame into a social network, blog, forum, e-commerce site, and much, much more. Some other facinating features are like: committed developers and technical support. Besides, User-friendly plug and play architecture in front-end as well back-end make it easy to use and explore. Its my best choice because of best security measure it provide per role and user. It can easily turn your site into multiportal(managed form single superuser) and multilingual sites in mere minutes or so. Truly a masterpiece !!
Can someone let me know a tool which provides exhaustive web based application to maintain the files along with version control and features to create our own blogs too…
WordPress.. Cool and Drupal JOOMLA! total No No!! Worst CMS i ever tried.
The easiest, fastest and 100 % SEO optimized it iMagic CMS,http://imagiccms.com for simple sites or for designers: =) very small in comparison with Drupal and Joomla. The site in google has appeared in 2 hours! Very interesting CMS.
Hi, I am a gree for the top 3 & the reste it depend on preference
I use Drupal professionally for 100k hits/day sites and it is a load of crap. It’s like a botched, ill documented, bad iface, SLOW lumbering beast that only just about manages to pull itself together with caching. Give me WordPress or EE or Orchard CMS any day.
Our company [10 users] is happy using workcollaboration solution. Take a look at http://www.workcollaboration.com. Great features such as CMS, CRM and Project Management with integrated video conferencing. $20 per server plus $3 per user. Great deal. They have 30 days trial.
Also, please check out Onpub @ http://onpub.com/
Onpub is a fast, flexible, and easy to manage Web CMS powered by CKEditor, YUI3, PHP 5, MySQL, GitHub and more.
Thanks much!