What is a good Content Management System to deploy for a personal website/blog?

Question

I originally thought building my own was the way to go, but I've recently changed my mind for two reasons - first, I don't want to reinvent the wheel and second, I don't have enough web development experience at this time to do a good job with it.

I've read another similar question, but I want more than a barebones CMS. Really, the only features I need out of the box are blogging tools, a site map, the ability to create non-blog pages (for things like "about me" and such). But I also want to be able to turn on or add additional functionality as I need it, especially since I eventually want to put my own projects on the website for download.

I've used CMSMatrix to attempt to find a good one, but it's tough. There are so many options, but I haven't really seen one I want. Does anyone have any recommendations for a free CMS that's good for not only dynamic content, but also static content? In addition, I'm looking for one written in PHP/JavaScript because I want to be able to read and understand the code to learn more about CMS implementations and the database must be MySQL (that's what my host supports).

Does anyone have any experience with a CMS and willing to share their thoughts?

For the record, I'm currently looking at TYPO3.

Answer 1

For the last few years I've used Wordpress pretty exclusively.

It does a lot more than blogging.

Answer 2

It's hard to beat WordPress.

The number of plugins and themes available for it is almost overwhelming. Almost any functionality you could possibly want is readily available through a plugin.

Most WordPress themes are CPU hogs, but WP Super Cache makes that moot.

Answer 3

Wordpress is amazing. Be sure to read this thread about the best blogging host for programmers.

Answer 4

I would also recommend drupal.http://drupal.org/

Answer 5

If you want a simple blog system I'd recommend Wordpress as well. I used it for over a year and it was fine. It has a good number of plugins and a lot of themes. Finally I get tired of some of its limitations and decided to move to Drupal .

For any more serious thing I'd recommend Drupal. It's open source, it has a huge comunity and a practically every pluggin you'll ever need (plus if not such plugin exists you can always code it yourself). The main reason I use Drupal is because it has a very cool integration with the Geshi Code Highlighting tool so you can post code snippets quite easily. Here is an example (my site is in Spanish).

About the other CMS.

• Joomla. Is almost as good as Drupal but... Drupal is more search engine friendly, Drupal has a better performance and a bigger community (sometimes size does matter). On the other hand Joomla is way more user friendly and has a better learning curve than Drupal has.
• Typo3. I've heard is great but I couldn't get it working in a week which, for me, is way too much of a learning process to begin with.
• I've seen other (free) CMS but those three are really the best ones. e107 or Pligg are good but not good enough.

Answer 6

I hate Wordpress with a passion. The code behind it is pretty shoddy - but it's the favourite as it has the best range of additions. It's primarily a weblog platform but with a bit of modding can be made into a reasonable cms for any application.

Answer 7

I've used TYPO3 on a number of sites, and it's great. It's more of a framework, though, compared to solutions like Drupal or Joomla. It's possible to do almost anything you would ever want with TYPO3, but it's not always the easiest.

Answer 8

I'd take a peek at ExpressionEngine. It runs on PHP and MySQL, and makes a good CMS in addition to being a good blog engine.

It's not open source, but there is a free version called "Core".

Answer 9

I've been blogging since 2002, and the progression of blogging engines that I've tried was this: Livejournal -> Movable Type -> Wordpress -> Drupal. Livejournal is a great community, but idiotic decisions were made by the management.

I disliked Movable Type architecture: it's put together in a most ridiculous way. Wordpress was all right, but still not as nice as Drupal, which is a CMS love of my life. There is a much steeper learning curve with Drupal, but in the end it's much better designed than Wordpress.

Drupal's core is a thing of beauty, the module system extremely elegant, there are metric buttloads of great modules for just about anything you can think of. It's built to scale (although scaling is not easy).

Answer 10

Typo3 is said to have a steep learning curve. I wouldn't suggest Typo3 for a personal website or blog if your goal is to get online fast.

However, if you are committed to using Typo3 you will benefit from a vast amount of documentation, including free videos and podcasts - also several physical books as well. Typo3 has a strong (especially) European community of developers, which is important - especially if you are into snowboarding and drinking beer. Also Typo3 is used by large companies, which means that you'll be able to make a living on Typo3 development/administration. Typo3 uses its own configuration language (TypoScript), there is an ongoing transition from version 4.x to 5.x - and this can be somewhat confusing to a newcomer.

There is by the way a weblog-extension (TIMTAB) that allows you to edit via XML-RPC (using for example Firefox-extension, ScribeFire).

Answer 11

Expression Engine is my favorite.

I've tried Joomla and Drupal and didn't like them as much. When going for a simple blog to me it's not about the structure or programming, it's about how easy it is to post information. EE allows you to set up your own templates and add your own fields into the tables, and does so in a very simple format.

I'd go with EE Core for ease of use as long as you know CSS and HTML (which it sounds like you do).

Answer 12

http://autoshows.ford.com is built with Wordpress. Can you tell it is Wordpress (other than looking in the HTML code)?

You also can use Nucleus CMS

Answer 13

Drupal has a great community to back up a great product. It can be just a blog but is also a good web framework.

Answer 14

I've tried a few, from blogging type CMSs to fully fledged industry standard beasts, and I've finally settled on Textpattern (http://textpattern.com/). It's written in PHP, is light and fast, and is easily extendable.

Answer 15

I've used Wordpress for quite a few years mostly, but if you want a blog system that you can learn from the easiest would be Wheatblog. It isn't the most advanced system and it hasn't been updated in a while, but it helped me learn quite a bit about PHP and SQL. It was also the inspiration for my own CMS system. Which I honestly think is one of the best beginner web programming projects, as well as one you will continuously go back and improve as you learn new techniques and technologies.

Answer 16

I've had some success with Graffiti CMS from Telligent. It's a commercial product, but has an Express Edition for non-commercial blogs, sites, etc. I've found the administrative interface to be easy-to-use, but it's got some extensibility built in, as well, so you can customize the interface and behavior to your liking.

Answer 17

For blog oriented sites I cannot recommend WordPress enough. I have a 2 million word blog and I write roughly 1,000 words per day and the system works amazingly well. New features come out regularly and the system is very stable. Upgrades are very smooth as well. And, it is free and open-source so even better.

http://www.wordpress.org/

Note: I run WordPress with MySQL on RHEL 4.6 with Apache and PHP 4.

Answer 18

I've been using TYPO3 for nearly 4 years and I am still learning how to use it. It is free and open source but power comes with a price (learning).

I installed a Drupal site recently. After using TYPO3, it seemed to be very limited, especially comparing the basic systems without plugins. For example you need to install a rich text editor (and turn on full HTML) to provide a WYSIWYG interface for entering content. Images too required plugins. These are standard features in the back end of TYPO3. Adding modules and extensions from the Drupal site seems to require quite a bit of work on the server (downloading, unzipping, changing permissions etc.) but with the TYPO3 extension system installing most extensions is easy.

Early in my web development career, I built custom sites with simple content management tools I developed myself. It is hard work and the maintenance gets painful as the site grows (or you leave and someone else needs to maintain it). I would not recommend building your own system - instead build on the shoulders of giants and use a developed system that is well supported.

Answer 19

I advise you to try Google App Engine,if you have known or are eager to know HTML/CSS/Python,My personal web site is hosted there, and I'm totally satisfied with it both in technology and marketing support.

I searched robust free web hosting for many years,and at last I found my dream web host in google,at first Google Pages,then Google Sites, and now Google App Engine,I have more control and free space with every update of my personal site with Google.

And Google App Engine is a cloud platform that few other infrastructure company can compete with,and it's free with a very high quota limit,why not take this kind of free lunch with the Internet shark which is not fucking developer unfriendly like MS?

My fucking China gov blocks my OpenID provider(http://izico.blogspot.com) again today,I have to post anonymously now.