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I think that's what Macromedia's Contribute is trying to be. I've used it, as a web developer working with people that would need to update content, and I must admit the version 1.0 left much to be desired. I think Macromedia should have paid us as beta testers, actually. However, it does allow for much of the small scale CMS functionality that you seem to be looking for. In fact, if you use Dreamweaver for your development, it works pretty nicely for allowing pieces of a website to be updated without screwing up your code. From the client perspective, I've found it fairly intuitive, espeically if you (as the developer) set up the Dreamweaver templates fairly explicitly. For $100, it's a pretty good way to let clients have some control over the content of their site.

http://typo3.org/ Just what you are looking for.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is one. The open-source guys love Slashcode and the people who get paid to do CMSs like to roll their own for each site, possibly using a proprietary generic system they've developed. There's not much of an incentive to build a thorough, generic CMS for the small business because there's not much money there except in the aggregate.

What do you think of Fog Creek's CityDesk? http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/ I haven't used it yet, but am considering trying it out for the next simple small-business site I do. It seems to be marketing itself at exactly this contingent. Then of course there's the option of using MT as mini-CMS. You've already linked to Douglas Bowman's article regarding Adaptive Path: http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2003/07/11/adaptive_paths_mt_setup.html There's also this article by Matt Haughey: http://a.wholelottanothing.org/features.blah/entry/007162 Those articles have led me to muse whether MT plus Zempt is perhaps what I should try next (user-friendly, free, simple CMS for simple user-updateable small-business site), instead of CityDesk. I haven't researched too deeply yet, though. Advice/suggestions appreciated.

Oh -- looking at the first line of your article again -- of course CityDesk is neither open source nor free (cheap though), and MT, while free, isn't open source.

MT is NOT free if your using it for a small business - its only free non-commcerical use. If you're using it for a company website then you have to pay for a commcerial MT license, which IIRC is $150. I am looking to use MT for our website in the next month or so (actually combining it with an existing JSP-driven webpage) - thats for the links to those articles Francois!

Excerpt: Thanks to comments by Francois Jordaan on a topic concerning CMS Needs over at the Measure Twice Weblog, I found a couple of interesting articles related to the use of MovableType as a simple CMS system. Stopdesign covers the use...

Excerpt: CMS Needs: "Why is it that nearly every open source CMS thinks they should look and act like a clone of Slashdot?" Agreed. phpNuke, postNuke, phpWebSite — they all look the same. Most CMSs these days are concentrated on the...

I've been working on Big Medium, an affordable, entry-level CMS aimed at small businesses and non-profits: http://www.globalmoxie.com/moxie/bigmedium/ Big Medium is intended to be an easy, highly customizable way to update page-driven sites, as opposed to bloglike "nano-publishing" sites. It's early days (we released our first version six months ago), and we're aware of some usability issues that we still need to iron out, but the feedback from our users has nevertheless been very positive. One of the things that makes me hopeful that Big Medium may be an emerging solution to the problem described here is that it doesn't have to have a "canned" look. Here, for example, are a few sites that are powered by Big Medium: http://www.affordabletranslations.com/ http://www.genomicstoolkit.org/index.shtml http://www.dualreach.org/ http://www.coolrunning.com/ http://www.parismuse.com/

drupal is a great *open source* (completely free :) CMS. Some of the users over there are either defectors or simultaneous users of Movable Type (myself being the latter -- using it on a yet to be released site for my business). A group of folks are trying to make drupal a little more "mainstream friendly" -- indeed when i first inspected it appeared a bit "geeky" (ala slashdot), but the reality is is that it's got a boatload of features, including blogs, user accounts, forums, collaborative stories, etc. Maybe you'd like to get on board and contribute to the current usability efforts? :)

Convea is a pretty stunning piece of work. It's super-Outlook in a browser. Email, file manager, discussion groups, contact management, etc. — it's all there, and its open source. See http://www.convea.com but would highly recommend the online demo as the first stop: http://www.convea.com/demonstrations.asp A definite must see imho.

I have been using Citydesk since it came out. It is very nice for building smallish sites -- 1 to say hundreds of pages. It also is set up to let clients add content while letting the developer do scripting and templating. And its very inexpensive

Haven't used it, but I came across CMSimple today on Freshmeat: http://www.cmsimple.dk/ And there is the expected fork as well: http://www.cmcomplex.com/en/ Good luck.

Adam, the latest drupal release contains a complete rewrite of the URL system. if your server has mod_rewrite capability, you can use "clean URLs". see http://drupal.org/node/view/2407 and speaking of categories--drupal is excellent in this regard in its taxonomy capability. j.

You might want to take a look at Plone (http://www.plone.org) I haven't used it other than testing and playing around with it, but it is very capable a standard non-news/blog site out of the box.

I wanted a semi-decent CMS, and couldn't find one, so I've built my own. It doesn't yet have the fully featured back end (right now it requires editing the database directly), but that's next on my list of thigns to do. I'll release it as open source, not quite sure of the license to use as of yet. http://thenew.pftqg.com/ is running off it. (It's names in limbo at the moment... just discovered another one with the same name). Big thing: it doesn't create urls, you do. (http://site/cms.php?cat=1&site=3&pg=38 is horrible... http://site/site3/cat1/pg/0,,38,00.html is just as bad. http://site/about/me/ is a useable url)

Thank you, thank you for this thread. Among many other web projects, I run the web site for my kid's school. It's fairly extensive, and I happily and easily update it using Dreamweaver. But someday, someone less web-savvy than me will take over, and then what? WebPublisher (a simple little CMS script) allows me to easily update individual pages, but little more. I want a simple, server side, cross-platform, web-based, password-protected, multi-user CMS that damn near anyone can use with little training. Is that really too-much to ask? I have to imagine there's a decent-sized market for this. Cheers.

While there may be a slew of opensource CMS solutions out there, most-to-all are too complex for the average user. The complexity of building and maintaining web pages, for small businesses and users alike, is part of the reason Weblog software was been so successful the past few years. Unfortuately, Weblog solutions such as Blogger and MovableType aren't the answer. While fine products, they provide only the tip of the iceberg of a complete CMS solution needed for a Small-Medium Business (SMB). Most SMBs don't need or aren't going to produce daily webpage updates. Heck, most SMBs don't even up date their pages after they are posted. (how many times have you come upon a SMB website with outdated information from a year or two ago?) What's needed in a SMB CMS solution is a product that is interactive with the SMB owner, something that would be akin to what QuickBooks does for SMB accounting. A product that communicates a website is one part of the SMBs overall marketing efforts. This product would need to be simple to install, self-contained in its ability to work without separate 3rd-party tools (e.g. FTP), work with any ISP's webhosting solution and brain-dead simple to use. Perhaps this will happen someday, but to date, none of the existing solutions are ready from prime-time with 98% of SMB users.

I'm putting my vote in for CityDesk. http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/ Francois, It's not open source, but if a small shoppe can't maintain the source of their own HTML web site, they probably don't need the source of their CMS either. Also, Adam didn't say that one needed to be open source. Just easy-to-use, which CityDesk exceeds at being.

I've looked at several CMSs over the past several months. The single biggest problem with all of them is a total lack of an intuitive user interface. Most are horrendous. There are some notable exceptions, though. However, those exceptions seem few in the Open Source realm. Drupal, on the surface, looks like a step in the right direction.

With FeedStream FLUID there is no software to install on the server, no database is required and you can host the site on any server. Try it out, and see for yourself. http://www.feedstream.com/product/fluidrequest.asp?type=download It comes with a complete website that you can customize to make your own. Regards, Mike Bardeggia mike@feedstream.com http://www.feedstream.com

If you are looking for a Microsoft IIS solution in ASP then check out SiteSage at www.starphire.com. It provides a robust WCMS targeted to small to medium sized businesses with integrated mailing list management, e-commerce, message boards, press room, ad management, visual WYSIWYG editor, and more. Pricing runs from the free SiteSage-PE version for non-commercial sites and US$495.00 for the SiteSage-Lite Edition to US$4995.00 for the full featured Standard Edition that includes multi-user role based web user and administrator security, integrated staging server, and work-flow management. SiteSage has been used for typical small business web sites, intranets, and portal applications worldwide.

PureCMS from GlobalSCAPE is targeted to small businesses. http://www.globalscape.com/purecms/

At Ektron we focus on ease of use for the content contributor and site administrator, ease and rapidity of deployment for the developer, flexibility, and standards compliance. At the entry level our solutions are among the most affordable commercial systems available and our enterprise solutions scale to the needs of any site and any organization. Tim Denby http://www.ektron.com/

For an easy to use, full-featured, flexible, multi-platform, open source (but not free), inexpensive web content management system with e-commerce add-ons etc. you may want to take a look at our HardCore Web Content Management system at http://wcm.hardcoreinternet.co.uk/

Slashdot is hard to read too, by the way. Just my opinion. Who would leave tables without padding on them letting the text run with zero margin up for years on end? Only true nerds is who. "Readability? We don't have time for that! We're tweaking the StartServers setting in Apache!" Comments interest level threshold? Truly nerdy feature. I can't read those threads. If a post is that dull or off-topic, delete it. Apparently, lots of work went into that system, and it's pointless, to me.

Oh, and thanks Patrick for mentioning pretty urls. One reason I tossed MT.

I'll add one more comment because it's a pet peeve of mine about CMS developers and other software vendors...At least two of the products mentioned here have absolutely no pricing information on their web site. One of them teases visitors with mouse-click after mouse-click before finally saying that you need to contact them for a quote. What's the problem here? Are we embarrassed by our pricing? I want to comparison shop, and you've just taken yourself out of the running because I can't get one of the most important pieces of information that I need. Others make it difficult to find another key piece of information: system requirements. What do I need to run this software? Is this IIS only? Windows/IE-only on the client side? Do I need PHP or MySQL? I need to know that up front, not after I've waded through all the blather about how you're revolutionzing the web. C'mon people! End of rant. Cheers.

liveSTORYBOARD CMS (http://www.livestoryboard.com) is a web-based Content Management System with a high-end feature set, yet affordable for smaller projects. Highlights: simple and intuitive wysiwyg UI, XML content repository, standards compliant output (XML/(X)HTML, CSS, etc.), real-time custom schema validation, standards-based code base (no lock-in in a proprietary system, no steep learning curve), separation of content and presentation (non-technical people can create valid structured semantically meaningful markup without realizing it, keeping design and function intact), multiple staging environments, hosted. Pricing starts at $50/month (including a development environment, hosting of live site is optional).

Have you checked out pMachine, by Rick Ellis? It's at www.pmachine.com . It's what i use for both my personal site and some client sites. It's very extensible, and while the terminology sounds geared to "weblogs", the system itself is very versatile and can manage a lot of different kinds of content. I'm not affiliated with pMachine, by the way; you seem to be getting a bunch of ad-type comments, and this is not one of them. BigMedium also looks pretty good; i've been looking into it for a project or two. The only problem is that i don't LIKE static-generated pages; i prefer the dynamic approach of pMachine.

I can't believe no one knows about MySource at squiz.net . It's a fantastic CMS in PHP that has pretty well everything (including friendly URLs) and is really easy to use. It's a page-based CMS rather than one with complex content objects but that's fine for many sites! Enjoy, qryss

I am searching the net for a freeware open source CMS since month. I have looked at so many of them the are either overkill or they are looking all the same. What about a simple flatfile storage, easy to edit in any of the popular WYSIWYG editors (GOLIVE, Dreamweaver), so I can tell my clients: - I can create custom beautiful layouts - you can update the content - you do not have to get a database host all you need is PHP or Perl (or whatever else works) All the sites mentioned here are either complicated to code (for me at least), costing money, are all looking same. CMComplex.com has one of the better ideas, but it is buggy, I also like miniPortail (aldweb.com), it has some great features and works flawless, but looks like every other one and the customization is really to much for me. Any other hints? Boris

Hello, I found this discussion very interesting so far, because it deals many of the issues which have been on my mind. For example, how can you create simple content management system that can be used by less computer-savvy people easily? Karl wrote: "While there may be a slew of opensource CMS solutions out there, most-to-all are too complex for the average user." I had the same thought while writing Rilke CMS, an open source content management system. Michael Bazeley wrote: "I want a simple, server side, cross-platform, web-based, password-protected, multi-user CMS that damn near anyone can use with little training." I think Rilke CMS supports all of the things that Michael Bazeley wrote about. I have a demo at: http://www.rilkecms.com/demo/ I will be releasing the latest version (0.90) at SourceForge this week. The demo site is currently using 0.90. I look forward to any constructive feedback. Thanks, - Jay Sheth

http://www.opensourcecms.com/ <-- a collection of them for you to TRY OUT on their servers http://www.moregroupware.com/ <-- looks top notch, only just played with it for a few hours so far. http://www.opencms.com/ <-- haven't tried it, but ... well, the name says it all.

YourWebPress.com is an provider of site builder and content managment solutions. With our software tools you can easily setup and maintain your company website including e-commerce and database applications. Content is KING on the Internet and if you don't have a well thoughtout plan for managing the content of your web site then YourWebPress.com can help

Excerpt: For the last while, I've been astounded that everyone who sets out to create an open source content management system either creates a blogging tool or a slashdot clone. It is really strange, and I don't know why those are...

To all, this is a great thread, lots of useful comments, opinions, ideas, etc. Thank you. I have also been looking into reasonably priced, full-function CMS to create project web sites for my customers (SMB vs. open source). Key to my application is that the majority of the content and updates will come automatically (e.g. daily) from an internal management system based on MS SQL Server, and it needs to run on IIS (use the same server as an internal collaboration web site). To date, I have taken a look at Starphire SageSite, Ektron CMS and Fog Creek City Desk, and will be seeing Globalscape PureCMS in a couple days. City Desk was too 'article' oriented and lacked a good WYSIWYG UI for my needs. SageSite appears to be the best fit, and I have been impressed with its flexibility, power, ease of use and support. Just my thoughts ...

I found two places that do CMS localization: http://www.abctranslations.com/index.htm (multilingual) http://www.acendia.com/index.htm (Spanish only) I used the first one for XML and ASP .NET technology, and it has made multilingual document handling easy.

I've spent 3 YEARS looking for a good content management system. One that could run a NORMAL SITE have SE-FRIENDLY URLS, and would be FLEXIBLE--at least customizable enough so that you could choose whether you wanted the articles to be put on the front page or not when updated, choose EXACTLY what links are in your navigation, choose how your articles are listed, and would have NO login form, except on an external page, which would just be in the mysite.com/cms/admin/ directory. Been an interesting read. And a lot of people have pitched their products here, which COST MONEY and are in fact NOT OPEN SOURCE. And as previously mentioned, some don't even list a PRICE on their WEBSITES!

I've used a bunch of CMS's. I'm a professional programmer and actually prefer to write my own applications. Unfortunately, my day job requires me to oversee a bunch of CMS's and I got to know them all pretty well. Some are convoluted as hell and confusing too,while some are just plain lame. Sorry to inform you but.... There is no truley great CMS that exists right now. Sorry, to bring the bad news. The Nukes, Mambo, WebGui, Filenet and TYPO3. The Nukes are plain and simple... kids stuff. Stay away unless you have pimples and a copy of Incubus's latest album. Plus, there's a lot of bad code in Nuke and a lot of clueless amatuer advice from Nuke users. Lack of good documentation for all of them is probably the most common downfall across the board. I've learned more from reading support forums on how to administer and run these damn CMS's than anywhere else. I've also learned about their quirky little-known behaviors too. Take WebGui...it's an OK CMS. Not bad...but not great either. There is an ebook called "Ruling WebGui"...don't waste your hard earned money hit the support forums. No doubt, there are quirky things about ALL of them. There are some minor issues with each and some have features that will drive you freaking insane!! Trust me!!! These are the ones that will casue you to abandon them all together. So far I like Mambo the best, although I do like the drop and drag feature of Webgui. With the lack of a truely awesome CMS on the market...it inspires me to start writing my own because i know I could better than this. But then again ...I don't have that kind of time to throw away. So yes...I always waiting for something better.

Well that's what i thought too, so i wrote a CMS myself. And I was trying to keep it as simple as possible. www.poociboo.de

I would agree in general with this posting. When looking to move from static html pages and subdirectories to a CMS solution, I tried most products(projects) mentioned here. We ended up using Metadot (http://www.metadot.com). While it is not the easiest to install, it is simple to update and add content and new pages. There is also a very active support forum. It is not perfect, but it has a lot of great features, such as LDAP support for authentication, granular security, forums, FAQs, file uploads, news articles, contact stuff. As far as a small business site CMS, I think this takes the cake.

I've developed a great CMS that is strictly for managing users, groups and data. It's not for producing content just managing access and integrity of either a new site or an existing one.

You might like Apache Lenya. http://lenya.apache.org Definitely does not look like slashdot or Postnuke :)

Here in SA Mambo seems to be the popular solution for CMS. Generally businesses find it more efficient to get CMS's custom built from scratch

> ... WebGui� Not bad�but not great either. why not? >There is an ebook called �Ruling WebGui��don�t waste your hard earned money hit the support forums. What about het it via eDonkey or similar networks?

Can anyone help comparing CITYDESK with DREAMWEAVER! Actually my seniors want me to use citydesk ...the sites we develop are not BLOGs nor NEWS websites... they do not change very often.... For what type of websites i should use CITYDESK and for what types I SHOULD NOT USE it?

driving For the first time all evening Marty lapsed into silence casinos the way.

I would recommend Drupal at http://drupal.org

There are demos of some at opensourcecms.com; they include a "lite" category. The one that looks most interesting (but I have not tested it yet) is Pivot (from pivotlog.org), flat file, open source, php. Personally, I like what I can do with dokuwiki, a flat file php wiki. Other wikis features (and requirements) can be considered at wikimatrix.org. For largish sites with hierarchical structure, Apache Forrest can be a good solution. It using Cocoon, etc to convert files to xhtml. The drawback is that you have to feed it xml files as input, so that does limit its audience. Hope this helps.

Where’s the easy-to-use CMS for the average small Web site?... Seems you have not looked very hard, open up google, and try again. Iv seen many of them, the one i remember right now is CMSimple. Good luck.

Editables.com are offering a total cms solution with one thing in mind, ease of use. Editables.com have created an instant cms system that will let users with little to no knowledge edit their entire site simply and easily. Editables have had alot of "flack and bad comments" from the tech geeks about releasing their new product as the geeks believe that everyone should be a programmer and they don't want the average user being able to edit their website. Editables.com made it on the front page of Digg.com which was generating millions of hits and interest for them and they recieved 561 digs in 3 hours. However the geeks started protesting and saying things like. "who doesnt know how to ftp" "this service is catering for the lower end of the food chain" The geeks also hid all the positive comments and they succeeded in getting it removed off the front page before it got too big. 561 positive comments (diggs) and 61 complaints from geeks and it was removed. The answer to you question is that "the solution is out there, editables.com" However programmers and web designers are usually the people who build CMS's and they dont want those people looked after. As soon as a product comes out that looks after the average person. They protest against it.

There are some easy to use cms's out there. Take a look at Oxygen CMS at www.oxygen-cms.com for example. It's intended for entrepreneurs and small business sites, exactly what you were looking for.

I am (I think) a typical small business owner looking for ease-of-use website maintenance. I've done the DIY approach, learnt some CSS and used plain vanilla text editors, WYSIWIG editors and 'site managers'. I was looking for some form of website manager and started looking at mini or 'lite' CMSs. I've visited some of the site mentioned here and am flabbergasted at the hype (hyperbole!) pushed out. Just about all the sites aim their jargon at the techs - not the typical business owner looking to create/maintain a site. Get wise you sellers of CMSs! Do some testing with SBOs, clean up your jargon and you might get some sales! Oxygen-cms looked, on the surface, to be something near what I thought I might need. It seemed not too heavily weighted towards blogs, news feeds and user management stuff. I can cope with some mySQL stuff and so gave it a go. Problem #1: There is no installation guide in text/PDF - just a darned video thing. There is no FAQ There is no 'contact us' link The installation video is not explicit enough and when mine came up against an error I was left in the middle of nowhere with an unhelpful error message and no help (see above re contact/FAQ/install guide). I managed to fight my way to a feedback page on their site and left a help request but have had no reply in 5 days. Sorry Oxygen - you flunked! Back to square one for me and my search for a WSMS (web site management system) - I'm giving up on any search using the the letters "CMS"!

Hi NeilA , Please use the feedback form at www.oxygen-cms.com/Feedback.html in order to send us your problems. We had technical problems with our website but we are willing to help you solve your install error. Please note that Oxygen is in BETA Version so errors like that may occur. I'm sorry to write this post here but NeilA did not leave an e-mail address for contact.

Dan, I recall there was an e-mail field to be filled in when I posted the feedback. Having now moved on to and grappled with Mambo I see that such feedback pages don't allow mail to be sent without an reply address. Anyway - I just went to check your website today to confirm same - but it is shut down for a week. For readers interested in 'simple; easy-to-use CMS: Mambo was reasonably easy to set up and get running with all their sample content showing the way it works. Getting to grips with actually operating it involves a steep learning curve and you need to know how to drive with CSS. (You can't have your cake and eat it can you?) It is biased towards intensive use with news, newsflashes, adverts, user control, hits,blogging etc but once you strip out that sort of stuff you can achieve some sort of sensible site which can suit a business looking to maintain a low-key presence on the Net. That said, I am looking to use it for a local 4WD club's site where frequent updating is needed with event calendars, photo galleries and the like.

TYPO3 is the fastest growning CMS at the moment. There are some reasons, why... you should take a look.

In my opinion Typo3 is the best Web Content Management System. But there are two interesting alternatives CMS:Joomla / Mamboo an Drupal.

I have been using many CMSs for a few years. The best one that can work with any html/htm site is lemonCMS. I have quite a few clients that I built sites for who use lemonCMS to edit content and upload pictures. This is awesome because it gives me the freedom to creat a great looking site and they can make simple changes on their own. Most of the sites I design are made with one main page that is php and can not be edited with the CMS so the client can't break it. All other pages load into an iframe. This gives me the most control over the look and feel of the site. Most recently I started embeding the pages using the include tag. I build the page and do all of the menus. The client can then edit any of the pages with ease. lemonCMS I use an older version. The one I downloaded a few months ago was unstable.

Typo3 ist the best, because there are no limits for most of webprojects

I will use Typo3 in kombination with Yaml CSS. So I can it use very well. Thanks