A content management system, or CMS for short, is a Web application that organises the content of a website. The content can be audio, video, text and images. A CMS makes the life of Web masters very easy, since it helps them create, edit and publish the content of a site very quickly without needing to deal with mark-up languages and their tagging.

There are many open source CMS applications that are available. However, which one is the best for your needs is an important question that you have to answer after analysing your requirements. One organisation may prefer a CMS application, but the same may not be of much use to another. Many CMS applications have been developed with different objectives in mind and you can download and test them to see if they match your requirements. To test all available CMS solutions is a difficult and time-consuming process. Instead, you can compare a few leading CMS applications. But let us start with their benefits first:
1.You can use it if you want to create:
b)A corporate website or portal
c)Online shopping portal
d)Community-based portal
e)News website
f)Blog
2.You can control you website anywhere, any time with your favourite browser.
3.The application is designed with a non¬technical audience in mind. So it is very easy to use it to maintain your website.
4.Unauthorised users cannot modify the content.
5.The content is separate from design. So, if required, you can modify the design without worrying about the content.
6.Navigation menus are automatically generated.
7.All your content is in the database.
8.You can schedule your content publication time.
9.You can control the look and feel of your website using free or paid templates.
10.You can modify the pages, even if you do not have any knowledge of HTML, CSS, XHTML, PHP, etc.
11.You do not need to install any client-side application to manage your site. You can fully administer your portal using your browser.
12.You can define security levels to the pages. This means you can define access rights as public to a few pages that will be displayed to the client, while the restricted pages will not be published.
13.You can plan your website for search engine optimisation (SEa).
Now, let's take a look at the main features of generic CMS applications:
1.CMS lets you turn your website into a dynamic information medium, compared to those static brochure¬type Web pages.
2.Content can be updated on a regular basis by authorised people using secure log-ins and passwords.
3.Additional modules are made available for various functions.
4.CMS does very well in being ranked with search engines.

1.A CMS website can also serve as a portal for internal communications by centring the organisation's procedures, manuals, politics and other information. Discussion forums can also be organised for communication between employees, management, clients, project work groups, etc.

1.Discussion forums can also be organised for communications between employees, management, clients, project work groups, etc.
Before we get started

Before you select a CMS application, consider the following aspects:
1.Find out the main aim of the CMS application, that is, the market the product is targeted to?

1.What are the different file formats that the CMS application supports?
2.How is the content stored-in a file or a database?

1.Does the CMS application have a community and is the community active, and more importantly, how helpful is it?
2.How many times has the product been downloaded?
3.How many web sites are currently using the CMS product?
4.What feedback do Web administrators and magazine reviews give about the CMS?
5.What kind of hardware and software is required to install and run the application smoothly?
6.How much time is required for the installation of the software?
7.Is there any online documentation (or wiki) about the product? If yes, how well is it structured and how informative is it?
8.How.many free add-ons are available?

1.What is the current rating of the CMS application (in comparison to other CMS applications)?
Drupal

Drupal is a free open source content management system written in PHP. It is very powerful like many other open source CMSs. The current version is 6.0. Since it is integrated with PHP and My SQL, it is comparatively easy to write modules for it. It is a good choice for creating blogs and news sites. It comes with many modules -- a few interesting ones are listed below:
•. PDF View: Converts text into PDF
•Typecat: Displays content by category
Spam: Detects spam content
•Editor: WYSIWYG editor for writing content
•URL Filter: Filters URLs in content items and converts them into links

• Web Forms: Constructs interactive forms
• Atom: You can implement Atom in your website
Mambo

Mambo is a good CMS for simple websites. It is very easy to configure, and even easier to edit and publish content with it. You can install it from within your Web browser by following a click-next wizards approach, and before installation you need to install MySQL. Mambo has an excellent user interface which separates the website and administrator back-end.
Creating content is very easy and you can modify the layout from the top to the bottom of the page. If you are good in PHP programming, then you can add your own enhancements as well. The help system is very powerful. Here is a list of awards Mambo has won:
•Best Free Software Project of the Year-Linux Format Magazine, 2004.
•Best Linux or Open Source Software-LinuxUser & Developer, 2004.
•Best Open Source Solution-LinuxWorld, Boston 2005.
•Best of Show: Total Industry Solution-LinuxWorld, Boston 2005.
Best Open Source Solution-LinuxWorld, San Francisco 2005.
•Best Open Source Solution-LinuxWorld, Sydney, Australia, 2006.
Joomla started off as a fork of Mambo because the community was not happy with the changing trend of Mambo.

Apart from its powerful features, it is rich in modules.
A Joomla-based website can implement RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, website searches and language internationalisation. It is licensed under the GPL. It is written in PHP and uses MySQL as its database. You can create or implement modules to your website, Similarly, you can extend Joomla with lots of plug-ins-you can either create them, or download them from the Joomla plug-ins website.

Typo3
Typ03 is another open source CMS application. It is also written in PHP. Its RTE (rich text editor) and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor can be configured according to your needs, The editor has an in-built spell¬checker. It supports unlimited undo levels. You can edit your pages directly on the Web page or in the editor. From the administrator's point of view, Typ03 provides excellent tools to manage the site. Therefore, many websites are using Typ03.

Plone is another open source CMS application built on Zope application server, It is well designed for internal websites, DPS (document publishing system) and groupware, Plone's administration system works with all browsers and has a simple installation procedure. Accessibility is one of the major strengths of Plone. It is easy to use, but if you know Zope and Python then it becomes even easier. You can have news feeds, blogs and events added to your site. The learning curve is steep but with the community growing daily and more books published, things are changing.

The objective of this comparison is not to find the best CMS or to rank the top 10 CMSs. Instead, it is to list some of the highlights of the most popular CMSs. Each organisation has different functions and, similarly, each CMS is different in features and the objective of its development. One single product cannot meet all business requirements, You may have to modify the code or import some modules/plug-
ins to suit your needs. Don't select a CMS just because someone is already using it. Check whether the CMS you have selected is appropriate for you, Some CMSs may not have good documentation or a good community to ask for help when you are stuck. You have to select the proper CMS by trying it for yourself.

I recommend you visit cmsmatrix.org for a comparison of all CMS applications. Another useful resource is opens9urcecms. com. This is a very interesting website because you will find demo versions of all major CMSs here. You can log in to the system and use the product to get the hang of it. You can create pages, polls, menus, etc. If you want to have a go at the administrator area, you can do that too. Because you must always 'try before you buy'-although, in our case, the right word is 'deploy'.