To cut it short, unless you have plenty of time, otherwise, it’s a wise choice to use off-the-shelf CMS.
Using existing CMS has its benefits, for example:
- Well-tested. They usually being written by a few developers and have a good community to maintain it.
- Save times. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. Features that you need for your website? Someone might have written a plugin for it.
- Documentation. Well, most of the times, we don’t document what we wrote but for those CMS, it’s designed for you and me, so a good documentation is a must.
- Templates and Plugins. They are built to save times!
Personally, I have been using WordPress as a CMS for a few websites. I love WordPress mainly because of its documentation and community. Everyone would have agreed with me that WordPress’ documentation is well-organised and easy to understand. Secondly, its community. Large group of developers, high quality themes and large number of plugins. Also, whenever I encountered technical issues, simple search with relevant keyword would return solutions, even though the solution is dated a while back, but it will still work because WordPress core engine are pretty consistent.
This time, I have a list of new PHP CMS. Most of them has database and some are using flat file system. If you are thinking to adopt a new CMS or switching, you might find something useful in this article.
Just like its introduction says, Anchor has a very simple UI. The installation takes literally less than a minute. It support Markdown editor, custom field, multi languages and simple theming.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP 5.3.6+
- Database: MySQL 5.2+
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes
Pico is another really simply CMS. It doesn’t have a backend to edit (there is a plugin to enable that). It doesn’t use database queries therefore making it super fast. It support Markdown formatting and twig templates.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP 5.2.4+
- Database: No. Flat file CMS.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes
Bolt is a tool for Content Management, which strives to be as simple and straightforward as possible. It is quick to set up, easy to configure, uses elegant templates, and above all: It’s a joy to use. Bolt is created using modern Open Source libraries, and is best suited to build sites in HTML5, with modern markup.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP 5.3.2+
- Database: Yes. SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes
Monstra is a simple and light-weighted Content Management System written in PHP! Monstra has a good collection of plugins available to download.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP 5.2.3+
- Database: Yes. SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes. Plugin Repository
WolfCMS is slightly more advance than the rest. It has a great collection of plugins and it support per page customization, flexible page content and reusable snippets.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP 5+
- Database: Yes. SQLite, MySQL.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes. Plugin Repository
PyroCMS is used by individuals, small & medium-sized businesses, and large organizations worldwide to easily create & build a variety of websites & web-enabled applications. It has multisite manager and powerful addons.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP
- Database: Yes. SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: No.
Kirby CMS is a easy to use, easy to setup and very flexible CMS. No database setup, it uses flat file system. WIth its jQuery inspired API, it’s easy to learn as well. It supports MarkDown syntax, templates, plugins and most importantly, good documentation..
- License: Free to try. $30 per website.
- Server Language: PHP
- Database: No. File-based CMS.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes. Plugin Repo
GetSimple is an XML based, stand-a-alone, fully independant and lite Content Management System.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP
- Database: No. XML Based CMS.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes. Extensions Repo
CMS Made Simple, an open source content management system, allows for faster and easier management of website content. This CMS is scalable for small businesses to large corporations.
- License: Open source
- Server Language: PHP
- Database: Yes.
- Self-Hosted: Yes
- Support Plugins/Extensions: Yes. Modules list