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Atlanta CMS Services

PLEASE NOTE: This page is currently being developed...

Most website owners demand the ability to manage, write, or otherwise control the textual content on their websites these days. Content management systems (CMS) vary widely in their sophistication, popularity, power; therefore, having a CMS means different things to different people.

The most important thing for us to find out first in order to help a client go from a static website to a dynamic website (where the content on some or all pages is generated on the fly from information contained in a database) is to learn exactly what it is the client would like to achieve.

Open source applications are exploding in popularity, with thousands of web apps now free for the taking (mostly). When there is no reason to do otherwise (and there rarely is these days, we have found), we recommend hosting your website on a Linux (or other) server that is robust in its support for PHP and MySQL, and the amazing availability of open source applications is one of the major reasons we make this web hosting recommendation: the spirit behind 'open sourceware' lends itself to lots of app development in non-proprietary prgramming languages and platforms.

Several sites are committed to the mission of reviewing open source applications, and one of these web sites we review on occasion is Open Source CMS. OpenSourceCMS also allow users to actually take many of these web apps for a test drive, having demo versions of many of these apps set up on their site.

There are many categories of open source CMSware. The most popular category of CMS is the blog. Our favorite blog-style CMS is probably WordPress.

• CMS - Blogs
• CMS - Calendar
• CMS - Directory
• CMS - e-Commerce
• CMS - e-Learning
• CMS - Forums
• CMS - Framework
• CMS - Gallery
• CMS - Groupware
• CMS - KMS
• CMS - Miscellaneous
• CMS - Portals
• CMS - Lite Portals
• CMS - Publishing
• CMS - Wiki

CMS Rankings & Reviews

• Open Source CMS :: excerpt: "This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to try out some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs...The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything..."

Home Pages: Robust CMS Apps

• Joomla :: portal style
• WordPress :: blog style
• Moveable Type :: blog style

Selecting an Open Source CMS

First, have a clear picture in mind regarding what you want to do with your content management system. Spend as much time as you need to make that mental picture as crystal clear as you can. Most CMS offer ways to expand them or to add functions, but you're much better off to start with the right system. Modifying an existing system beyond what it's meant to do is often just not economical.

Once you know what you want, try out a few of them. Seek out the one that meets your needs with the least amount of hassle. Try to find the CMS that looks and works closest to your ideal content management system. The less customizing work you have to do, the better.

Pay particular attention to the administrative interface, since that's where you are going to have to do your work. Make sure you understand what the main optioons and features are and how they work.

You might even want to check the forums to learn what other users think.

Blog CMS

• WordPress
• Moveable Type

Calendar CMS

List of Calendar CMS

PHP iCalendar :: home page :: see a demo