Content Management

A website content management system (CMS) is software used to effectively manage the content of your website. A CMS helps website administrator to ‘upload’, ‘edit’ and ‘add’ content without any knowledge of web programming. Content management systems offers a range of benefits to website administrator and due to this they are highly popular among web community.

There are many CMSs on the market but you need to select the one based on your needs. If you are going to use a CMS for the first time, we recommend you choose a user-friendly CMS that does not add any kind of complexity on your part.

What follows is a list of what I believe to be the seven best web content management systems for novices:

WordPress

If you are a small business or a blogger, WordPress is an ideal choice for you. WordPress CMS software is developed by hundreds of community members and it includes a number of themes and plug-ins for appealing and effective website design.

Joomla

Joomla CMS is widely used in web applications as well as website development. Due to its user-friendliness and flexibility, it is amongst the most popular CMS on the market today. Joomla CMS is open source software thus available for free download to all.

Drupal

Drupal is open source website CMS software and It is used to create a wide verities of sites from a small scale personal blogging websites to large-scale community websites.

2012 may indeed be the “Year of Web Content.” Actually, so was 2011, 2010, 2009…  But this article on the Forbes Marketwatch blog describes how some big brands are attacking content marketing and content curation to help fulfill their brand promise.

Amongst content management insiders, there has been an ongoing acronym war over what the technology systems should be called that help companies manage their content online -- which quite frankly, end users care very little about.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected.  Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to https://www.joomla.org/core-features.html . But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

I'm a huge fan of eGovernment and Government 2.0 initiatives. A few years ago we started seeing government sites adopting open data initiatives and adding features that allowed the public to provide more feedback to the government that served them. Changes such as these are good initiatives by governments as they continue their evolution into the digital age. Recently, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts redesigned their official website, Mass.gov, using the Percussion CM System.

There has certainly been a lot of debate about Web Experience Management. Some analysts like Janus Boye have called it "meaningless vendor jargon". Some others like Scott Liewehr of Gilbane have said that understanding Web Engagement Management is "crucial to your business". Forrester has attempted to create its own definition – calling it "customer experience management". And, finally, others such as Julie Hunt – have written how Web Engagement Management even extends into the intranet of Enterprise 2.0 – and how content should be utilized to engage employees.

So here’s my take on it:

The trend in Web Content Management for the last couple of years has been Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - and it was all about getting your audience to your site. Period. Just make sure they find you. But then what? What happens once they get there? How do you keep them on your site? How do you make sure they come back later, how do you get them to start doing business on your site? How do you make your visitors fall in love with your site?

That’s Web Experience Management. It’s whatever comes after they’ve found you.

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.

The problem I have with top ten lists is that inevitably there is a story that should have made the list but didn't. Last week, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2011 and wished I could have included additional stories. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles and they aren't always an indication of my personal favorites.

In case you missed these stories the first time around, below are ten additional content management articles we published in 2011. Every article deserves a second chance to be highlighted or tweeted again.

• Book Club: MODX The Official Guide
• Open Source CMS, Market Share Report, and White Elephants
• Review of Drupal's Building Blocks
• Judging Five Open Source Content Management Systems
• Book Club: Pro Drupal 7 Development
• DotNetNuke 6 Released (Screenshots included)
• List of Fake Content Management Stories from April Fools Day 2011
• Drupal 7 has been officially released 
• Moodle 2.1 Released
• More than an Introduction to Accrisoft
  

The OpenCms 8 content manager user manual - which is now available for download - provides a quick non-technical overview of OpenCms 8.

This complete and easy to understand reference will help the content manager to build websites with OpenCms 8 within minutes. Learn all about advanced direct edit and the sitemap editor.

Explaining every feature and functionality of the OpenCms 8 user interface this user manual provides essential know-how for the content manager.

Learn more about:

The top rated open source CMS Composite C1 reaches version 3.0 with new features for everyone.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark 21st December. The Danish software house Composite has released a new version of their top rated open source CMS, Composite C1. Version 3.0 of the popular content management system features over 30 new functions and improvements that will make life easier for everyone whether they be editors or developers.

Easy for end users

For the end users the team has improved the editing and user experience in Composite C1 with a ton of new cool features.

Amongst others seamless copy/paste from Microsoft Word, a new instant upload feature that allows users to upload images and documents on the spot while editing pages, and full support for HTML 5, script and iframe ensuring that editors can now load external content on their site.

When I read the stories we post here at CMS Report, I am reminded how quickly the CMS market continues to evolve and mature. Every year, I worry that there is nothing "new" to write about in this information system niche only to have the developer, user, or owner of a CMS push another new story idea toward my screen. This time around when looking for the top ten content management stories of the year, I concluded we didn't have ten great CMS stories for 2011. Instead, I found more than two dozen great CMS stories for 2011.

Below are the top ten stories of 2011 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list are ranked based on the rate they were viewed since they first appeared at CMSReport.com.

Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2011

1. The 2011 Open Source Awards
2. Google+ first week of use review
3. 10 New Content Management Systems via CMS Focus
4. Another new term: Social Content Management
5. CMS Expo 2011 Series
6. Liferay Marketplace and Liferay Portal 6.1
7. CMS Redefined: Cloud. Mobile. Social
8. CMS Report upgrades to Drupal 7
9. DotNetNuke, Drupal, Liferay, and SharePoint in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals
10. CMS in the Fast Lane: Joomla! 1.7