10/23/2008

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These days, much of the world of open source has turned squarely toward using open source content management systems (CMS) to better manage the needs of today's enterprise and small business. In this article, I will be examining some of the most compelling CMS-based solutions that do not involve Drupal or WordPress.

1) Ripe Website Manager

There is nothing ripe about this CMS, not in the slightest. Unlike other CMS installations, Ripe provides its users with the following key benefits.

Speed -- this CMS is a fast performer, which means a lot when building a site that depends heavily on fast load times.

Add-ons -- Just because it is not one of the big two options mentioned above.

SEO ready. Not so much on a theme by theme basis, this CMS is ready to rock right out of the door.

Search that works. Are you reading this WordPress devs? A search function that does not send the user running into the arms of a third party provider. This feature alone is a big help, believe me.

Simplicity. It is simple to use, always a big bonus when it comes to finding a usable CMS to work from.

Multiple levels of admin. Again, key for users looking to take on work with others working in an administrator capacity.

At first pass, it might seem like a project getting ready to die a slow death, due to a lack of recent CMS updates. Despite that setback, the Falt4 CMS itself has enough going on in its corner of the CMS realm that most people wanting something to use for their site that is not the usual CMS, might find Falt4 to be just the ticket.

Falt4 features include:

Integrated work-flow. Assigning different abilities to different parties within your admin group. Helpful when trying to grow your side from a seeding to something more substantial.

Change your site structure without completely starting the site over from scratch.

Support for multiple languages.

Integrated statistics. Know which articles are performing and which are failing miserably.

Spam defense. Unlike other anti-spam tools found on other CMS platforms, Falt4 provides you with a powerful tool to tweak things to better deal with the growing spam based threats developing out there.

Not all CMS solutions are created equally. This is certainly the case with Enano as it is not just a CMS product, it doubles as a wiki product as well. The CMS itself is fairly straight forward and even though it is allows its users to benefit from frequent releases, it is not completely filled with bugs.

Other features include:

AJAX at its core. The fact that there is so much AJAX goodness to be found with Enano from the rich editor to those looking to add more functionality later, this CMS is ready for the challenge.

Decent SEO optimization. Provided themes are well designed, at least from the perspective of popular search engines.

Skinnable. Take the look of your CMS to the level you happen to see fit. Interchangeable CSS files, design themes that best meet with your needs, Enano does a good job at providing the user some choices.

Secure. One of the better CMS' with regard to security, keeping an eye out for SQL injection dangers among other means of keeping your site's data safe from malicious types.

Just how marvelous can a CMS actually be? Well, while it may not be perfect, Marvelous CMS is pretty impressive overall. Simple yet effective for those looking to get the most out of a simple to run out of the box CMS solution.

Features include immediate:

Usability

Support for multiple languages

Great user management

The ability to add-on new functionality via plugins and extensions

Real w3c standards compliance.

Not everyone out there is looking for the best, sleekest, most extension filled CMS known to man. Some users are simply looking for a CMS that provides a simple, yet effective means of utilizing a secure web based system for content management that did not break the bank.

Basic features include:

A simple text editor without all of the bells and whistles

Strong user management

A secure core, that was not going to lead to exploit after exploit later on

For advanced users, a "templating" engine in which the CMS can be built upon easily

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