I have a news website which I intend to port over to a new host. I wish to add functionality to it beyond what I have time to code, so I am thinking about using an open source (OSS) content management system (CMS).
I am a strong believer in open source software, using linux at home and lots of native OSS with it. Whilst OSS can be tricky, I believe it is better to encourage the end user (i.e. me) to get on with a project without financial or closed-source barriers.
Anyhow, in my quest to find a CMS I looked down a list on Wikipedia of open source CMSs, looked at their respective information pages and closed the shorter pages (i.e. the ones nobody has bothered writing much praise or criticism), opened each of the remaining homepages to see how professional the company looked, then returned to the Wikipedia information pages to see whether it was an individual developer or a team/organisation/foundation.
The following CMSs (without having tried any) have made it into the final considerations:
- Joomla! - a fork of Mambo and is included in the control panel of my host;
- Mambo - run by a foundation related to GNOME;
- PHP-Nuke - I’ve seen the *Nukes being used many times before;
- SilverStripe - very useful screenshot on their homepage;
- WordPress - used before, but seemed a little too much to customise, though they will probably all be so.
I shall continue on my quest later…