I have been thinking about changing the CMS system I am using, but I have forgotten everything I knew about why I picked it. 

The original idea was that it is easy to use and works well with the search engines.  Most CMS software is horrible at getting pages indexed with the search engines.

The other problem is backups, almost all CMS programs are run in your hosting account which means that if your host kicks you off one day then you lose everything, unless you remembered to make some kind of backup, which is just another step and more work.

http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php - this site has a lot of good information about the different open source CMS programs out there.

The main things I am looking for in a CMS program is Search Engine compatibility, it should have search engine friendly url’s and it should be easy to use with an easy way to add links to the side bars.

Other than that I would like to have it where I can type on my pc and upload it to my hosting account, this automatically makes a back up, which saves me some work each time I create a web page. 

I am not going to pay for any CMS software, if I were going to pay anything I would just go ahead and buy another copy of http://xsitepro.com/ for $300

But I don’t think I really got anything from the last one I bought, I mean it probably did work a little better than some of the free stuff out there, and it probably saved me a few hours of time, but my time really isn’t worth $150 an hour right now.

Content Management 

Drupal  

Geeklog  

Joomla 1.5  

Joomla   - most SEO friendly

Mambo Open Source  

PHP-Nuke  

phpWCMS  

phpWebSite  

Post-Nuke   - version 8 has some SEO plug-ins

Siteframe  

TYPO3  

Xoops

Notes:

The Joomla mod I'm referring to is Artio JoomSEF for better SEF management with Joomla! It may require a small rewrite of the htaccess file to work correctly.

For seo I use OpenSEF + Joomlatwork (Joomla SEF Patch Extended version). Since most extensions are free and install easily, it is as good as out of the box.

- - -

security issues.are another problem, I installed b2evolution and someone hacked it a few days later and was using my site to send out spam, my host shut down my account and I had to really work to get it back, and of course I lost all my work that I had done and had to start all over again with some new software.

WordPress and Akismet. To handle the spam comments.

Another important thing to keep in mind is the ability to install the software, some of them take days to install and won’t work with some hosts.  It is an absolute must that the software install easily that’s why I really won’t consider using anything that is not listed in your hosting company’s fantastico program.

June 1, 2008