In Tutorials Apr 2, 201013

Whats the Best Open Source Content Management System for Designers?

Choosing the perfect CMS for any project is one of the most important aspects of web design – and the hardest. There are so many CMSes available and each offers so many different features and options, how can you possibly pick the best? For the most part it comes down to opinion, reputation and whatever you feel most comfortable with. Just like every project, everyone has there own thoughts and opinions on there favorite CMS.

As we do every week, we like to highlight an important question from Answers. And this weeks question is no different, everyone has there favorite and everyone has there opinion of What's the best open source content management system for designers?. Whats yours?
You can leave a comment below or you can leave an answer on the original question here.

What's the best open source content management system for designers?

This question was originally asked on Answers by Rubydevelops001, and has so far received 8 answers.

Answer from Ryan Smith:

Each Open Source CMS has it’s good and bad points. I personally use WordPress as it can do 95% of the sites my clients need. There’s the odd site I would not be to great for.
But that’s not to say it’s ‘the best’ for yourself or clients.
It’s a good CMS to start on. Well documented and tonnes of tutorials out there.

Answer from Emiel:

Since you’re asking for designers and not for coders, I would strongly suggest WordPress. You can create basic but great looking websites without too much developing skills and even if you take to time to get to know the basics of CSS, PHP and wordpress theme development, you can build about every type of site you need. Also your clients will be pleased by the easy to use and understand ‘backend’ of the CMS!

Answer from Heri Setiawan:

CMS Triangle: WordPress-Drupal-Joomla . And there is also a powerful CMS called Chyrp.

Answer from Jot8686:

Joomla is a good, solid system that has a vast community supporting it. Can’t go wrong with Joomla.

Answer from Bridget Thornton:

I’m biased because I consult for these folks but Webvanta appears to be more scalable than WordPress in the long run plus I think it is pretty easy to use and built on RoR. You could try it free.

Unanswered Questions on Answers

Below you will find this weeks selection of unanswered questions, can you help?

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  3. How Can I Make an Ajax Callback Start Another Ajax Call?
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  5. How Can I Make the Images on My Site Pop-Out and Have a Shadow Behind it on Roll-Over? (Like inspectelement.com)
  6. How can I retrieve my facebook RSS status?
  7. How Can I Convert a Java OutputStream to an InputStream?
  8. How Do I Automatically Resize All of the Images on a Webpage to Fit Any Screen Resolution?
  9. What's the Best Example of an XHTML Transitional Layout?
  10. What's the Most Efficient Way to Make a Text Area Auto Load While a User is Typing?
  11. How Can I Retrieve Multiple Anchor URLs Using jQuery?
  12. What's the Best Way to Split a Huge MySQL Query?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

13 Comments

  • Robin
    Apr 2, 2010
    I use WordPress more often than any other CMS. Of all the open source CMS solutions, it’s the easiest (for me) to customize and the easiest to use for clients who aren’t so technically oriented.
  • Whats the best open source content management system for designers? | Lively Design Tuts
    Apr 2, 2010
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  • Alex Mitchell
    Apr 3, 2010
    I prefer to work in WordPress or Joomla myself for freedom in design/creativity – I suspect mainly due to having most experience playing in these.
    I will occasionally work in Drupal or MODx but more often than not, this is when a project is geared towards application rather than design.
  • Justin Carroll
    Apr 3, 2010
    WordPress is by far the easiest. Then I would go Drupal just because of the insane amount of community behind it and for the fact that it can be branded and the client never has to know it’s Drupal. After those I trust nothing.
  • Thomas
    Apr 4, 2010
    For me it has to be a toss up between Joomla and Zyke CMS. Joomla has a great community but a relatively steep learning curve. Zyke CMS is relatively new, but quick and easy to put up a simple site for clients.
  • Tim Gummer
    Apr 4, 2010
    Coming from a serious visual design background, I’ve gone drupal due to some fortuitous partnerships. A steep learning curve meant I HATED it at first, but by any standard its definitely the most powerful CMS of the big three, and its use for very very very big projects is a testament to that. My web revenues doubled when I went with Drupal (after using Modx for a year) – I could simply work at a much more serious level. Put simply – drupal enables you to customize much more deeply, at a more granular level, and be more creative and involved with the function that the form of the site is to follow. Other benefits are performance speed, and a very, very strong community. It was a tough intro, but I don’t regret it. If you do take that plunge, just make sure you have access to a some developer support you can count on.
  • Daniel
    Apr 6, 2010
    I made my site with Joomla and I find it to have quite a bit of community support. Go Joomla!
  • Website Design Surrey
    Apr 12, 2010
    Great article, it can be tough to decide which cms is best for your requirements!
  • Los Angeles California Website Design and Development
    Apr 12, 2010
    This was a great articles. For me the best open source CMS is the wordpress or the joomla
  • John
    Apr 27, 2010
    http://www.getsiteadmin.com is also a very simple and good CMS especially made for designers.
  • Most Popular Design Links of the Week 28 March – 3 April
    Jul 14, 2010
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  • King Pladson
    Oct 17, 2010
    been visiting ur blog around a few days. really enjoy what you posted. btw i’m doing a report about this topic. do you happen to know any good blogs or maybe online forums where I might get more information? thanks a lot.
  • Alex Barr
    Jan 9, 2011
    I dislike using WordPress for more than blogging software, but yes it is simple for the end user and has a good community behind it. Joomla took me a while to learn, but its downfall is how complicated it is to do anything or teach a client how to navigate the backend. Drupal I haven’t really dived into because although it seems to have the most power behind it with Joomla shortly behind it it is even less friendly than Joomla.

    All in all I have ended up designing a majority of all my sites in Concrete5 because it is super simple to design for and the in context editing and large clean buttons in the backend make it a breeze to learn for my clients. Although it doesn’t have as many plug-ins and add-ons as say Joomla or WordPress it will fit 85% or more of your client sites nicely.

    Check it out at: http://www.concrete5.org/

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