What is the “best” free CMS for my needs?

Question

I have the task of creating a website for a small non-profit organization. I have a bit of experience with ASP.NET, but since hosting ASP.NET is quite expensive here in Germany (we will also need a lot of web space and traffic), and also because there is a rather large list of functions that I think I have to go with a PHP / MySQL based CMS (correct me if I am wrong). The question is which one? There are so many free CMS. If I tell you what I need, can you tell me what would be a good choice?

Here is my requirement (sorted by priority):

• Ease of use (installation, configuration, maintenance) for me, who is building the site, as well as for members of the organization, they should be able to easily change the contents of some of the main pages, add, add a new mail list, upload the file to the repository, etc.
• A membership / role management system . Based on the role of member access to certain subpages, subforums or folders in the file management system, etc. Must be limited. Only certain roles should be allowed to add new mailing lists or moderate the forum.
• A mail system that allows me or organization members to add new addresses, maillinglists or newsletters.
• A file management system . Participants should be able to upload archive files to the server and view them through the web interface. Access to the folder should be limited based on the rights of the participant.
• Bulb forum with private subforums.
• Localization As much as possible of the final site (if not all) that is presented to the visitor to the site, as well as to members who support the site, must be presented in German.
• Good control over the design / appearance of the overall site. I need to have good control over how I want the site to look.
• Vibrant community with enough impulses to find resources and help when I get lost.
• extensibility . In the absence of any smaller functions or if the behavior of the existing function is not quite the way I want it, it would be great to easily add it myself.

Answer 1

As others have mentioned, Joomla may be a good option for you, although Wordpress may also work (and it's easier). However, I highly recommend you check out OpenSourceCMS.com , which has demos for many free and open CMS, blogs, forums, shopping carts, etc. For most of them, you can try both the administrator and the interface. Spend some time looking at them, and then when you find what you like, explore them further by going to their websites.

Answer 2

Concrete5 is a new content management system that is excellent. Easily customizable, convenient, convenient control panel to control

and he is open source

Answer 3

My vote will be Joomla . It has the most features that you discussed, if not as an extension, component, or theme. I installed several options and rarely need to use any encoding during installation, plus there is a lively community if you need help. It also blends in well with other "best of breed" apps, such as the BB forums, the Coppermine photo gallery, and more.

Answer 4

Joomla! seems to suit your needs and I also suggest Kunena for the forum (which integrates with Joomla) and DOCman for a file management solution.

Answer 5

Well, I would suggest Drupal for any advanced website. Although Joomla! and similar systems are a little easier to get started, Drupal is much more flexible and extensible.

Do you need full control over the topic? Or user authentication? Access control? Database queries? User image scaling? Tagclouds?
He is there when you need it :)

Answer 6

I would go with Joomla even if I am an ASP.NET developer. Joomla is very flexible and customizable, so it fills all your needs because of the large community.

Answer 7

As a complete CMS noob, I asked myself the same question. I started with Drupal. Of course, you can do a lot of things with him. Very extensible and customizable.

But after implementing my first site in Drupal, I decided to create the next one in Joomla in order to have a comparison frame. Conclusion: Joomla is looooooooooooot, which is easy to start and takes much less time to create a functioning website from scratch. Of course, for very large projects, Drupal allows you to customize more, but for the type of project you offer: I would recommend Joomla ...

Answer 8

I found this report in PDF comparing . WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Plone are very helpful when I asked myself the same question lately. Good comments, with particular emphasis on nonprofits — find a summary / comparison recommendation on pages 13-14.

Definitely read the report because it talks about the strengths / issues of each package - given your priority list of features, I would recommend Joomla . I think you can do what you want with reasonable efforts and good latest modules like DocMan . WordPress is great for a blogging site, but it lacks the number (2,3,4,9) of your requirements, and while Drupal is powerful and flexible, it definitely has a steep learning curve. Plone even more so.

Good luck

Answer 9

I would vote for DotNetNuke , this is ASP.Net, but it will save you the overhead of learning a complete new environment, language and tool just to implement a “free” CMS, realistic, how much is your time? It meets all your criteria and there are currently 600,000 users - this means that you can simply continue with it, somewhere someone has already worked on your problems for you.

As for expensive hosting, why not accept it in another country, I get $ 5 a month for DotNetNuke in the states, and I am a code from Australia.

Answer 10

I had experience with Joomla . High customizability, lots of plugins and one of the liveliest development communities. It also has a large admin panel.

Answer 11

Well, as Tom Deleu said, yes, although Drupal is a very capable and powerful CMS, it’s difficult and difficult to work with. Switching to another version of CMS, which is Wordpress . Although it is very easy to develop content sites using Wordpress, but with very limited capabilities and flexibility.

According to your requirement, my vote will also go to Joomla . It is very user friendly, optimized and CMS you can rely on. Small applications that you referred to as the "mail system", "File system", etc., are more suitable for joomla than others.