Top 10 Content Management Systems Compared

When I was asked to write about the Top Content Management Systems, DotNetNuke (DNN) and WordPress immediately come to mind because of their ease of use, maturity and adoption by organizations.  (to see a full set of popular CMS take a look at our detailed list of additional top CMS).

WordPress.

If you have never used WordPress, you are in for a nice surprise!  This open-source (and free!) content management platform has one of the cleanest, most user-friendly interfaces I’ve seen and it’s extremely easy to learn how to use. Look at the screen shot below for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the management dashboard.

It is usually easy to install (depending on your hosting environment), and it is surprisingly SEO-friendly. Since blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and BlogSpot hit the scene, search engines seem to be paying special attention to them. In comparison to traditional sites, blogs tend to be updated more frequently, consistently, and allow a level of communication and collaboration similar to Wiki’s. All three of these things when working in combination create an environment online that Google apparently likes quite a bit. Of course, there are a lot of other things to consider with regard to SEO.  See the Link for more information or contact us.

With regard to design, you can adjust your WordPress site to look however you would like it to appear. There are out-of-the-box “themes” you can download and install, and if you have a designer/developer handy, you can customize that theme. (WordPress calls the site template a “theme” whereas other systems use different terminology. A Wordpress theme consists of the design, layout, menu and styles.)

There is an active and growing community of developers which work to make the already-free system even better. All types of interesting plug-ins are available (“plug-in” is the terminology WordPress uses to describe add-on functionality that can be installed on the base WordPress framework such as a form generator, basic commerce, games, etc…). Many large enterprises and publishing media organizations are even adopting WordPress for their blog sections. See CNN’s Political Ticker; Dow Jones’ All Things D; Fox’s GretaWire; Time Inc’s The Page; People Magazine’s Style Watch; famous bloggers like Dan Lyons, Om Malik, Curt Schilling, and Robert Scoble; blogs for Flickr and Second Life; and many more.

DotNetNuke.

The other content management system that’s near and dear to my heart is DotNetNuke, also called “DNN.”  Also open-source (and free!) DotNetNuke (DNN) is a power-house framework, used by many large and small organizations and is capable of a wide variety of basic to advanced functionality. One main advantage of DNN is that it can be used to easily create and administer your company’s website, and it can also be used for intranet and extranet portals.  It has a modular framework structure with a large community for support and active vendor community for additional functionality not included in the core framework.  DNN competes with other popular open source CMS; for example: Joomla, Drupal and Ruby.

DNN includes over 30 “plug and play” modules (DNN calls functionality-adding applications “modules” – synonymous with WordPress “plug-ins”) such as Wiki, Forum and Chat that allow content managers to add functional content easily to sites.  DNN also has an intuitive management interface for content managers to do actions easily such as:

•    Manage roles and groups of users
•    Add pages and dynamically create a menu
•    Modify site design and layout
•    Easily manage massive amounts of content
•    Integrate the system with other systems you’re using
•    Create Intranet and Extranets
•    Create multiple portals

DotNetNuke and WordPress

There is a debate as to whether WordPress is a CMS.  It can certainly do many of the same functions as a CMS.  Our feeling is DNN and WordPress both have a place and often will be used together on the same site.  A solution like WordPress is not ideal for you if you require outside system integration, advanced commerce features, menu navigation, or other features required by larger enterprise organizations.  While DNN is considered overkill at times when all organizations require is a blog or a more text based site.

Of course, there are other open source and free CMS available and even more commercial systems. So how are you supposed to choose amongst the hundreds?  Focusing on the main purpose of the site is one key.
Here are some initial questions to help determine the direction to go with your CMS decision:

•    How will you use the system? Are you using it for a specific purpose such as a blog or need a full scale set of broad functionality?
•    Are you using it to put up a corporate, personal or social networking site?
•    What are the technology requirements?
•    What types of features and functionality does the new site require?
•    Will the site require outside integration of data or information?

See our detailed list of the Top Content Management Systems

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