Content management can be beautiful, or terrible.
The idea of a Content Management System is attractive, you do the design, let the client handle the minor tweaking. But everyone who has used a CMS realizes that they’re not always designer nirvana. They all have limitations, complications, and problem areas.
That’s why it’s important to choose the right one for the project. The CMS Design Resource is a place for designers to read quality CMS reviews, articles, and news. So you can get recommendations and stay informed about the best content management systems. We don’t claim to be the experts on every single one, but we’re hoping that those of you who have experienced the joys and pitfalls of using content management for their own sites will leave some CMS reviews for the benefit of all the rest of us.
Featured CMS:
Featured Design:
DesignBitsExpressionEngine
The latest CMS news from around the world
Aug
23
The 2010 Open Source Awards
It’s that time of the year again for PacktPub’s annual Open Source Awards. These awards go to some of the hard-working people out there who help develop open source CMS’s. This year the CMS-related categories are: Open Source CMS, Hall of Fame CMS, and Most Promising Open Source Project. At this time of year they are in the nomination phase, where you can nominate your favorite projects out there. After September 17th, they will narrow the results and you can vote for the top projects.
Aug
7
Have you seen MojoMotor?
In the midst of the update to ExpressionEngine 2.1, EllisLab announced a new product that hasn’t gotten a ton of attention. Its name is MojoMotor and is made to provide a more simple starting point for a website. Then, if the website grows in complexity it could be easily upgraded to ExpressionEngine. Compared to EE, this CMS is a pretty stripped down page-based CMS. It allows you to reorder pages quickly, and use a WYSIWYG editor to update content.
Mar
19
SXSW Roundup
We attended several CMS-related panels at SXSW including:
- Is Wordpress Killing Web Design? – This wasn’t as much a discussion about Wordpress as much as CMS’s themselves. The discussion revolved around the pros/cons of themes, and how we, as designers, have gotten lazy at creatively laying out content within the “editable area”
- R.I.P. Content Management System – This panel’s speaker was Dries Buytaert who created Drupal. Mostly it was just a presentation on Drupal and how it is being used by developers to create really complex, social websites. Coincidentally, we also were on the same plane as Dries on the way home.
- ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination – This one was our favorite. Hosted by a variety of different EE community members, it started with a simple overview of what EE is and how it works. Then progressed down the line of panelists with helpful tips starting with simple theming tips, and ending with complex plugins and whatnot.
SXSW was a completely new experience for us and certainly CMS’s are a big part of what the “interactive” space is involved with. We visited with some of the vendors who were hawking their new CMS’s, we got to meet people we’d met in CMS forums, and we shared a few laughs with fellow designers/developers about the joys/pains of working with them.
Mar
12
We’re at SXSW!
We’ll be attending the SXSW Interactive conference and attending some sessions related to ExpressionEngine, Drupal and Wordpress. We’ll see if we have anything to report back to you after we get back. Feel free to send us an email if you’re also planning to be there!
Mar
10
Jaws 0.8.10 Released
We haven’t heard much from the Jaws CMS since we added them to our site. So it’s good to see that they are still alive and kicking! This release fixes the CMS for newer versions of PHP and cleans up all of the libraries and languages that are included with the system.
Mar
2
Elgg 1.7 Released
Elgg is a popular social networking CMS platform that allows users to create custom profiles, notifications, blogs, as well as upload media and files for sharing. The 1.7 release focuses mostly on refining and upgrading the backend of the platform including a functional REST API, full text search, and database improvements. The creators say that the CMS is gaining momentum and popularity in the recent months.