I got my first computer in 1982 – an IBM PC 8088 (no dash-2), 64k of SOLDERED system memory, 2 full height floppy drives, a green screen with no graphics, and an 80cps Epson printer, with Graftrax…woo hoo!

I was guilted into starting my first BBS (bulletin board system) by my son, who had started his own, known as Druid’s Keep…a dos-based role playing game board. Mine had to be bigger of course, and ultimately sported 3 gigabytes of files, multiple CD drives, including CD-changers, all on a 3-node Lantastic network, running Wildcat Multiuser BBS. Wow

Fast forward a few years, and I needed software to go into the dialup ISP business. I prowled around, did not like the cost of what I saw (never mind the technical savvy required) and settled on Worldgroup, the newly named successor to The Major BBS, which had a powerful plugin available called Major TCP/IP, making it Internet dial-in-enabled, incoming telnet, ftp-able, etc. In addition, it supported Radius, so I could plug in my beloved Livingston portmasters…the year was 1995.

A few years (and several business changes and IT providers) later, I began testing out a new form of community software known as ecobuilder (e community builder)…unfortunately written in cold fusion. Running on Microsoft NT servers with SQL7, and requiring the cold fusion server, it never really took off. So I poked around and joined a merry band of miscreants who had shown the inventor of php-nuke the door and branched – into Postnuke, a CMS that, along with phpnuke, was largely responsible for the widespread acceptance and depth of features evident in the modern CMS’ we enjoy today. If you would like to see what some of the original cast of characters from Postnuke are doing these days, check out – Xaraya – it is not for the CMS newcomer, but what a powerhouse.

I have now moved on from Postnuke, and, contrary to half-hearted attempts over a year ago with the platform, am happy to report that the relatively young open-source fork project of Joomla – a breakaway from an older CMS known as Mambo, has a developer community literally on drugs, churning out high-value components, add-ons and themes, SEF (search engine friendly) URLs, and most important of all: MARKETING CAPABILITIES!

When choosing a platform on which to blog, I kept going back and forth between the towering open source giant in the industry: Wordpress and the increasingly robust, though more complex true CMS – Joomla, before determining that it did not make any sense to pick between the two when I could use BOTH! Since then, I am finding all sorts of platforms doing the same thing – sticking with their old tried and true, and simply adding their Wordpress blog to their Internet presence. The best of both worlds.
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What is CMS? Content Management Systems are defines as software designed to simplify the publication and editing of Web content. CMS simply enables content creators to submit content without requiring the knowledge of HTML coding or the uploading of files. A CMS is most commonly used in establishing a presence on the Web. CMS software keeps track of all of the content on a Web site. This Content can include simple text, photos, music, video, and documents. The greatest advantage of using a CMS is that it virtually requires little skill or knowledge to manage a website.

Here are The Top 10 Content Management Systems to Help you Maintain your Website with Ease:

1. Joomla: The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, printable versions of pages, RSS feeds, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.

Joomla! is used to power all different types of Web sites including corporate intranets, online magazines, newspapers and publications, as well as e-commerce, and government applications. Non-commercial usage is also popular. Key features include: completely database driven site engines,News, products, or services sections fully editable and manageable, topics sections can be added to by contributing Authors,fully customizable layouts including left, center, and right Menu boxes, browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site, and dynamic forum / poll / Voting booth for on-the-spot results.

2. WordPress: Not just used for blogging anymore, WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. It is free to use for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee or design price.

3. Drupal Platform: Drupal is a free and open-source platform and content management system written in PHP for building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes.

Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.

This software can be used for community web portals, discussion sites, corporate web sites, personal web sites or blogs, E-commerce applications, resource directories, and social networking websites.

4. CMS Made Simple: CMS Made Simple is an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) for simple, stable content sites. It is used all over the world for simple websites, as well as more complex corporate applications.

It provides a fast and easy way to create a web site and manage its contents. Unlike many other CMS packages, it is not overly complex, and the software is not just for blogs. The software provides the ability to manage news articles, search functionality a contact form, a WYSIWYG editor (for your customers or editors) and numerous other built in functions. Additionally, there are hundreds of third party add-on tools that are quickly and easily installable to allow building websites with many different capabilities.

5. dotCMS- include features you might expect in a complete CMS, including true separation of content and design, ease of editing, page caching, advanced templating, this software also includes many features you might not expect such as a Web2.0 calendar and events management, e-communications tools and more. This is truly CMS at its best.

dotCMS is fully supported and has been deployed by thousands of companies, news organizations, Web 2.0 sites, universities, associations and foundations.

6. miaCMS: Lets you build powerful and standards-compliant Web sites in a matter of minutes. It features simple installation, graphical content editors (with automatic code generation), RSS content syndication, an extension system, flexible site theming capabilities, site searching, user management, and multilingual support.

7. Mambo: This sofware can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. It is used to power government portals, corporate intranets and extranets, ecommerce sites, nonprofit, schools, church, and community sites. The great features of this software include: easy to install, hundreds of extensions, plugins and add-on products, simple for non-technical users to create and update content through an intuitive, web browser-based editor, fully localised with language management, and customizable.

8. Textpattern: Designed to help overcome the hurdles in publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages. The features of this CMS is endless, but here a few; Unlimited site sections, integrated link management system with unlimited article, link, file and image categories, browser-based file and image upload & organization, fast intuitive editing of articles, links, comments, page elements Posting, editing & design privileges hierarchy, unlimited site authors, browser-based plugin installation and maintenance, import content from other content management system, and built-in search engine.

9. Pluck: This CMS focuses on user friendliness and enables non-technical people to manage a website. Key features include: create an unlimited amount of pages, Insert images in pages, create your own blog, create an album to show images or photos to your visitors, keep in touch with visitors by including email forms on pages, and the ability to change site information, for better results with search engines

10. Frog CMS: This program is known as CMS Simplified. Some of the great features include: unlimited hierarchically structured page navigation menu, drag and drop page ordering, flexible page content (body, sidebar, extended, summary), per page layout customization, simple and reusable content snippets, password protected administration, Simple user and permission management, and much more.
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