What is the most flexible Open Source Content Management System?

Question

Which CMS is the most flexible and/or easily modifiable in the following ways:

• Have multiple clients access the CMS with multiple users per client. And each client can control multiple sites.

• Control the layout of created pages based on certain criteria. Criteria such as which section/sub-section the user would like to put the page in. e.g. - if the section for the page chosen is Clothing->Womens->Shorts then only allow certain layouts to be chosen.

It would go something like this: - The user creates a new page within the CMS - They choose the section or subsection of the page - Based on that selection, we control if they are allowed to use the chosen layout/template.

Reason for this is that we want to control the UI of the top level pages (where the user enters the site from). And, have less control on the lower nested pages.

Answer 1

emacs ............... (this is meant as comic relief, rather than down vote please comment and i'll be happy to delete)

Answer 2

2 very flexible Php based CMS frameworks are Drupal and Joomla. Both are built upon plugin architectures where you can customize you application by downloading, installing and configuring the appropriate plugins for things like blogs, forums, search indexing, RSS, storing & playing video etc...

Drupal refers to their plugins as Modules. There are thousands of modules available (over 700 in the Utilities category alone). Warning - the modules are version dependant and not all modules have been upgraded to run in the current production versions of Drupal so pay attention to the version support.

Joomla refers to their plugins as Extensions. At time of posting, they had over 4500 extensions available. I haven't used Joomla myself so I can't talk to it's quality or ease of use, but it does seem to be another very popular, flexible product.

Answer 3

I just found this post that compares 10 Java based opensource cms products. I don't know if you have a particular technology in mind, but if Java's your thing one of these might help you out.

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/top-10-java-content-management-software/

Answer 4

Have a look at Jahia (www.jahia.com) - java open source based cms. The features you are describing are indeed typical of "site factories" which is a main business case for that CMS.

read http://www.jahia.com/jahia/webdav/site/jahiacom/shared/products/Jahia%20Sitefactory_WhitePaper.pdf and test yourself the features with the online demo.