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Selection criteria

This portal is an effort to document all simple CMS solutions available for small websites. While the Internet is full of CMS solutions with many features (Mambo, just to give an example), implementing it for a small or simple site is just too much overkill. In a perfect world, that would just mean that the powerful CMS will be doing mostly nothing powering your site. In the real world, however, selecting an overkill CMS will result in complicated administration, very long time to learn how to operate the CMS, and being forced to the rules of the CMS (which happens much more often than it should).

Well, you are in luck. Not only will this portal list all of the easy / simple / lite / small CMS solutions, but every single one will be install-tested, evaluated, and commented upon.

First, to outline the selection criteria: the following are the minimal requirements you I will base my decision on:

• Must have a support forum. Extensive help, number of forum posts. All CMS pages here will contain a direct link to their forums and my opinion on the size of the forums. This is extremely important, because if something does not work with small CMS does not necessarily mean that the user must be able to dig into the code themselves and fix the problem (which seems to be the presumption of some of the CMSes). # of modules, # of forum users, # of posts will be noted
• documented install instructions
• Must pass the no-errors installation test. I will be very hard on a CMS that I cannot install myself without errors.
• can be installed in any directory. This is very important for evaluation, backup restore, interoperation, and other functions. Anyone who requires their CMS to be installed in the "/" directory will not be my friend.
• Not bloated and not single-task-specific, simple. But not so simple that it is a single-person project. Therefore, it should be mature enough to have good documentation, frequent releases, and a large support forum.
• Blogs will not be discussed.
• Must be Open Source
• Must have a website in English.
• How "simple" will I go? Not far, because simple does not mean "lack of features". Most people have a wanted features list when looking for a CMS.
• no forced content/structure (fe blog format)
• SEF / human friendly web addresses required
• easy to use existing html/css templates, or existing html pages can be imported
• Small CMSes with small development teams, small forum, and no module development (fe they claim they include blog, forum, chat, etc and that is all you need) will be listed as curiosities only. They are not applicable for a future plan of a website. If people are okay with these features, they better stick to a hosting plan that allows domain name registration.
• no portal or blog (just because there is a gazillion of them), plus blogging is best left to other sites.
• security. It's very hard for anyone, especially me, to evaluate how secure a CMS is. One clue is the size of the security/hack related thread on the support forum. There's one of the largest CMSes with a huge security related forum. I won't name names. It is up to a smart developer to make sure his solution does not have security flaws.

Few CMSes will make the "recommended" status. Based on the criteria above, the following Content Management Systems have been rejected:

Rejected Content Management Systems

˅˅˅ Additional valuable information is available at one of the links below: ˅˅˅