Ask Slashdot: What's The Best CMS?

Slashdot reader pipingguy recently inherited a 2012 installation of Joomla 1.5.26, and while performing four years worth of updates, began wondering about other content management systems. I've built more than a few static websites (I use Sublime Text 3 or Atom, not some fancy-pants WYSIWYG doohickey) and am quite familiar with CSS, but databases not so much. I've been through lots of online documentation and am a bit bewildered, but I'm following the recommendations regarding backups and the like.

What are Slashdot readers' latest opinions on the three most popular CMSes -- Drupal, Joomla and WordPress? Any tips for me before I accidentally blow away the existing site and have to rebuild everything...?
Leave your educated opinions in the comments...

Comments

Banshee for sure!

[Aethedor]

It's more of a CMF (Content Management Framework) than a CMS, but I think nothing beats Banshee. It's secure, fast, small (therefore easy to learn) and has many ready to use modules. It has a clear MVC structure, so changing or extending the code is easy.

Wordpress, PMWiki, Couch are my favourites

[Anonymous Coward]

Wordpress has to be up there for relative ease of use.
PMWiki is a long time favourite due to the flexibility - I use it as a CMS with most of the wiki stuff hidden from normal users.
CouchCMS is another easy to use and dead simple to create themes and style mods. A lot of flexibility.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why only the top 3? What about other top 10 cms?

[Cryophallion]

Why do we have to stick with only the top 3? Aren't there great options who some haven't heard of yet?

Personally, I adore concrete5 (www.concrete5.org). They are making some major changes to the structure, and the upcoming version 8 adds new data objects that will make it more than just the page centric pattern it was before. The developers are active and engaging with the community, it's been around for long enough to be mature, and the in context editing is a huge asset to the end user.

When I look at a CMS, I don't just look at how to code within it, although that is massively important. I also look at how easy it is for end users to pick up and customize. And being able to make changes to an area right in that area on that page is a killer feature. The fact that the block architecture ensures you can add special custom areas very easily and in a modular fashion is also extremely helpful.

I've worked with all the big CMSs, and tested them out. I've tested out a boatload of the medium sized ones as well. C5 was hands down the winner.

Concrete5 for ease of editing

[Eukariote]

My recent CMS search and selection exercise made me bypass the "big three" and opt for Concrete 5. It had the right mix of features, mind share, and in particular, ease of adding content. Adding content is simply done while browsing the site by dropping a page into edit mode, modifying it, and then publishing it. This is particularly helpful when multiple technically challenged people need to update the site.

So far I am quite happy with it, but it is not free from issues. There is a decent set of plugins and themes, the community is enthusiastic. Your requirements may differ: there are tons of other CMSes to choose from.

Depending on scenrio, none

[Anonymous Coward]

You may instead consider a static site generator (there are a ton, jekyll, hugo, a google search for static site generator will turn up a bunch)

Then your server load is much lighter by getting out of server side anything by people just reading), you can still provide search most of the time (lunr). By avoiding a CMS, you are less likely to have a gaping security hole (e.g. my team has an internal only git server to coordinate maintaining it and building it, then uploading it to a dumb static server).

So step one is considering whether you really *need* a CMS, a lot of folks really don't.