When I went looking for an opensource content management system to use mid last year, I only knew of a couple, these were Mambo, and PHP Nuke. I had heard mixed reviews about these systems, and wanted to make sure I was using the best, I went in search of one that would do everything that I needed.

After a bit of searching I came across two of the most useful sites on the web (in my opinion)... OpenSourceCMS and CMSMatrix.

OpenSourceCMS

For those that don't know, OpenSourceCMS is a site that lists most of the open source systems available (those written in PHP and MySQL) and allows users to rate them. From this data, they have compiled a CMS Top List showing the top rating open source systems in the categories of Portals (CMS), Blogs, e-Commerce, Groupware, Forums, e-Learning, Image Galleries, Wiki's, Lite, and Miscellaneous. They also provide working demos of each system, that are reset every 2 hours, so you can try them out before committing to any.

CMS Matrix

Because all the content management systems differ in features, it is hard to know which is the best to choose. This is where CMSMatrix comes in. CMSMatrix allows you to select several content management systems and compare the features against each other in an easy to read matrix. There is nothing like being able to see the features stacked up side by side when making a decision like this.

So what was my final decision?

After a bit of research and feature comparisons, I (obviously) choose Drupal and am very glad that I did. After a fair learning curve, I am now confident setting complex Drupal sites for clients, and providing all the functionality, stability and flexibility they need, without having to write a custom system myself, or having to pay through the nose for it.