These days there are a lot of awesome FREE Content Management System options out there that make our jobs as Web Designer and Developers so much easier!  A content management system (CMS) is a computer system that allows publishing, editing, and modifying content as well as site maintenance from a central page. It provides a collection of procedures used to manage workflow in a collaborative environment.

There are many CMS available and it can get confusing and difficult to figure out the best ones. But after an extensive research, reviews and trying few of them, below are the best free Content Management Systems available.

WordPress

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

URL: http://wordpress.org/

Joomla

Joomla is one of the world’s most popular open source CMS (content management systems). With millions of websites running on Joomla, the software is used by individuals, small & medium-sized businesses, and large organizations worldwide to easily create & build a variety of websites & web-enabled applications.

URL: http://www.joomla.org/

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

URL: http://drupal.org/

Magento

An especially effective e-commerce content management system. Offers features above and beyond normal e-commerce systems such as virtue-cart. A must have for online stores.

URL: http://www.magentocommerce.com/

dotCMS

dotCMS removes the technical issues that have long slowed the pace of website change, allowing organizations to move ideas to market in days, not weeks. Our enterprise-grade web content management system is java based and open source. This combination has created a unique model – a sophisticated development architecture, the innovation of open source, ease of change – all backed by a commercial organization.

URL: http://dotcms.com/

Frog CMS

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Born as phpRadiant in January 2007, Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS, a well-known Ruby on Rails application. Although the two applications still share a family resemblance, Frog is charting its own development path.

URL: http://www.madebyfrog.com/

Radiant CMS

Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams that was built on Ruby on Rails. It gives an endless list of awesome features and is definitely worth checking out.

URL: http://radiantcms.org/

Which CMS to choose?

That is up to you, your needs and what programming languages your Web server support. I personally use Joomla and WordPress. But I can´t discount any of the others, that´s why they are listed here for you to choose from. To help you better make an informed decision to narrow your choices, try this CMS Comparison tool, and also try the CMS demos listed here. And most importantly, before you install your CMS software, make sure that your Web server meets the technical requirement.

And don’t forget to let me know in the comments section which is your favorite CMS and why!