Top 12 Free Content Management Systems (CMS)
Building websites by hand with all html/css pages was fine a couple years ago, but these days there are a ton of awesome Content Management System options out there that make our jobs as developers and website publishers SO much easier!
So take a moment and look over the list below of the 12 best free cms options available. Some might seem really familiar (we love wordpress) and some others might be new to you. They all deserve your attention for a few minutes. Hell, even test drive a few of them and see if there’s any that might work for a new project – I’m currently digging into SilverStripe which looks to be pretty damn awesome!
And don’t forget to let us know in the comments section which is your favorite CMS and why!
Wordpress ↓
WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. Wordpress is also what Tnt Factory run (our blog design ).
Joomla ↓
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Drupal ↓
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.
SilverStripe ↓
The SilverStripe CMS is a flexible open source Content Management System that gives everyone involved in a web project the tools they need to do their jobs.
Cushy CMS ↓
CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.
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.
MODx ↓
MODx helps you take control of your online content. An Open Source PHP application framework, it frees you to build sites exactly how you want and make them 100% yours. Zero restrictions and fast to build. Super-simple templates in regular HTML/CSS/JS (any lib you want). Registered user systems and a killer community. Welcome to web-building nirvana.
TYPOlight ↓
TYPOlight CMS is a web CMS that Uses Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies, has a live update feature for those of us who have multiple blogs, gives multi-language support and hosts a ton of other great features.
dotCMS ↓
The fully functional GPL version of dotCMS continues to forge ahead – providing bleed–edge features and the latest code to a thriving community of developers and users.
Expression Engine ↓
ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website. If you’re tired of the limitations of your current CMS then take ExpressionEngine for a spin.
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.
concrete5 ↓
A CMS made for Marketing, but strong enough for Geeks! Concrete5 is an open source content management system. It’s revolutionary – and it’s free.
Learn to build your own CMS with PHP ↓
If you’d like to build your own CMS, Jason Lengstorf has an amazing tutorial posted on CSS-Tricks that will show you step by step how to build a simple CMS for your own website using PHP. It’s definitely worth checking out – I followed the tut and use it for a small note keeping page (similar to a to-do list) and learned a lot about php along the way.
Express email marketing
Face it: There’s a right way and a wrong way to do most everything. This is particularly true when it comes to email marketing. The last thing any law-abiding citizen ever wants is to be associated with spam. That’s why we created Express Email Marketing. Now you can enjoy all the benefits of email marketing – and steer clear of ever being considered a spammer.
No one wants to receive marketing emails they didn’t request. That’s true! But there are many people who want to know about your products, company or organization. These people will welcome hearing from you and actually look forward to getting your emails.
Kwel Hosting Express email marketing starts from only $7.99 per month for sending 500 emails and makes it perfect solution for small business announcements to your clients.
Kwel SSL certificates
People are getting smart about online security. More and more of them are looking for the padlock icon and “https” prefix in the address bar of their browser before submitting personal information online. If your Web site doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, visitors may leave before making a purchase, creating an account or even signing up for a newsletter. But you can change all that with an SSL from Kwel Hosting.
Starting from $29.99/yr, Kwel SSL certificate provide good and affordable security for you and your clients.
Kwel Hosting Service
Website hosting starting from only $4.99/month, 99.9% uptime server with Best-of-Breed Routers, Firewalls and Servers.
All plans include:
24×7 FTP access
World-Class Data Centers
Daily Backups
Best-of-Breed Routers, Firewalls and Servers
Web site statistics
FREE Email Addresses
Google® Webmaster Tools
Ad Credits from MySpace® and Google®
Definition of Customer relationship management (CRM)?
Customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Once simply a label for a category of software tools, today, it generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.
Benefits
These tools have been shown to help companies attain these objectives:
Streamlined sales and marketing processes
Higher sales productivity
Added cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
Improved service, loyalty, and retention
Increased call center efficiency
Higher close rates
Better profiling and targeting
Reduced expenses
Increased market share
Higher overall profitability
Marginal costing
Creates communication
Challenges
Tools and workflows can be complex to implement, especially for large enterprises. Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and recording interactions and communications. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking, territories, opportunities, and at the sales pipeline itself. Next came the advent of tools for other client-facing business functions, as described below. These technologies have been, and still are, offered as on-premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure. Perhaps the most notable trend has been the growth of tools delivered via the Web, also known as cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS). In contrast with traditional on-premises software, cloud-computing applications are sold by subscription, accessed via a secure Internet connection, and displayed on a Web browser. Companies don’t incur the initial capital expense of purchasing software; neither must they buy and maintain IT hardware to run it on.
Despite all this, many companies are still not fully leveraging these tools and services to align marketing, sales, and service to best serve the enterprise. Often, implementations are fragmented; isolated initiatives by individual departments to address their own needs. Systems that start disunited usually stay that way: Siloed thinking and decision processes frequently lead to separate and incompatible systems, and dysfunctional processes.