5 Best Free and Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS)

CMS is a web content publishing and management system that allows normal content originators to create, submit, and publish their content directly within a web site without any development tools or knowledge of HTML. Most web CMS use a database to store content, metadata, or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Here a list of some of the most using and perhaps the best free and open source content management systems (CMS) available.

1. Drupal

Drupal is used as a back-end system for different types of websites. It can be used for a small FAQ site or may be a large corporate website.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: core CMS, Views, CCK, Organic Groups, & huge library of contributed modules.
Website: http://www.drupal.org/

2. WordPress

WordPress is simple Content management system and not as advanced like Drupal. WordPress also got lot’s of support from online communities, lot of beautiful and advanced themes. WordPress is perfect for single user blogs, with a large number of themes and modules available online.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Easiest CMS to use, customize, and extend.
Website: http://www.wordpress.org/

3. Joomla

Joomla provides a platform to publish the content on World Wide Web. Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, everything you need and more to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: Professional standards, internationalization, customization.
Website: http://www.joomla.org/

4. Media Wiki

MediaWiki is a free software wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis.
License: GPL
Programming Language: PHP
Main advantages: If you need a wiki, it is the best.
Website: http://www.mediawiki.org/

5. Movable Type


Movable Type is also a good blogging platform with multi-user support with more plugins. It is the main challenger to WordPress for a personal blog platform, and supports multiple users, Themes, and Tags.
License: GNU
Programming Language: Perl
Main advantages: Blogs
Website: http://movabletype.org/