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10 CMS That Are Not WordPress

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WordPress is the most popular CMS currently, WordPress focused entries garner more attention then other topics. Even though we like WordPress a lot or not, it’s always good to know what other options there are out there.

I chose some of the most known one next to WordPress to the most obscure ones. Varying form flat files to full mySQL database. Ones that require almost no knowledge to get up and running, although most CMS now a days are becoming more and more easily to install(not Movable Type).

Should it happen you are in a spot where you are not able to use WordPress, check out these 10 CMS that differ greatly from each other.

Zimplit

Zimplit is the easiest CMS (Content Management System) ever made.
Zimplit is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface. Zimplit consists of only one core engine file

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP v-4.x
* Database: No
* Self-Hosted: Yes
* Plug-ins: No. But themes are available.

SkyBlueCanvas

SkyBlueCanvas Lightweight CMS is an open source, free content management system written in php and built specifically for small web sites.

Lightweight and simple does not mean simplistic, however. SkyBlueCanvas includes a lot of the same basic abilities as more robust systems but in a simpler form. The software is not meant to be all things to all users but it does offer features you expect like a familiar Plugin API, Extensibility and skinnability.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP v4-5.x – Only Linux Servers
* Database: No
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes

razorCMS

razorCMS, the flat file content management system, that can be as small or large as you wish. It’s structure allows you to have just the amount of functionality you need in a flat file CMS solution, helping to keep speed and simplicity at a maximum. razorCMS is ideally suited to small to medium website projects, it can be run without need for a SQL database, due to it’s flat file structure it has no need for a database meaning it can also be a cost effected method in content management, allowing it to be used on the cheapest of web hosts, or even free hosting.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP v-5.x
* Database: No
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes

LotusCMS

LotusCMS brings to the forefront design and design integration into one of the most neglected CMS niches – Databaseless Web-Design and Development.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP v-5.x
* Database: No
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: No.

TypePad

TypePad blogs make it simple for you to share your interests and get noticed.
Easily design and customize your own blog, and use our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMO (Social Media Optimization) tools to promote your blog and attract an audience and following.

* Price: Paid + Free Trial
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: Yes
* Plug-ins: Widgets and Themes

Movable Type

It’s easier than ever to publish and share information with Movable Type. Movable Type makes it simple to manage entire websites, start new blogs, and build an engaged community of readers and customers.

* Price: Free + Paid
* Server Language: Perl
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes and Themes

Nucleus CMS

Nucleus CMS is a flexible and easy to install content management system, aka blog software. It helps you to publish a website and lets writers do what they are best at: writing items or articles, without having to worry about formatting and markup.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP 4.0.6 or higher
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes and Themes

b2ecolution

b2evolution is a powerful blog tool. It includes all the features of traditional blog tools, and extends them with evolved features such as file & photo management, versatile skins, multiple blogs, detailed user permissions… not to mention plug-ins, of course.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP version 4.3.2 or higher.
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes and Themes

Drupal

Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: Recommended: PHP 5.2 for Drupal 5 and 6, PHP 5.3 for Drupal 7 Required: PHP version 4.4.0 or higher.
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes and Themes

Textpattern

Textpattern is an open source content management system unlike any other; it allows you to easily create, edit and publish content and make it beautiful in a professional, standards-compliant manner.

* Price: Free
* Server Language: PHP 4.4.1+ or 5.0.2+, in mod_php or fastcgi mode.
* Database: Yes
* Self-Hosted: No
* Plug-ins: Yes and Themes

Three WordPress alternatives for your blog

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I wasn’t what you would call an “early adopter” of WordPress. In fact, I sometimes feel like I was one of the last to make the switch from Movable Type, which I loved and recommended to anyone who asked me what a blog was (yes, those were the days). Today, of course, over 90% of the work I do is on WordPress- and I’ve fully embraced this powerful publishing system.

But there are alternatives. And today, I want to show you three of them.

Habari. This, in comparison to WP, is one of the latest blogging systems, and you can tell right off the bat: it feels more modern somehow. Indeed, their FAQ explains just how modern it is:

Habari is being written specifically for modern web hosting environments, and uses modern object-oriented programming techniques. Using these recent but well-established additions to the PHP language allows Habari to make use of PDO, enabling prepared statements for all interactions with the database. This greatly reduces the system’s vulnerability to SQL injection attacks. This is just one of many benefits of modern object-oriented techniques.

LifeType is worth a look especially if you’re tasked to build a blog for a non-techie client to use- its really simple to use, and offers multiple blogs and themes built on Smarty. I haven’t had much experience with LifeType, but its loyal users sing praises about its clean code and lightness.

And finally, Movable Type. Okay, so I’ll always have a soft spot for MT- but you know what? It’s a great system, maybe the only one on this list that can truly go head to head with WordPress in terms of features. It features multiple blogs (something I would love regular WP to have), supports both static and dynamic page generation, and has some of the most beautiful blog themes ever to grace the Internet. Movable Type is powered by Perl and not PHP, so if you’re more comfortable with the former, this is probably a better choice for you.

Do you have any WordPress alternatives to suggest? Let us know.

Five things that rock in WordPress 2.8

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Before anything else: as of today, WordPress 2.8 is in beta. That means that it’s not a stable release yet, and therefore not appropriate to use for your important blogs. Things might be buggy. Things might stop working. So unless you like living on the edge, install 2.8 only to play around with- or, if you’re a developer, for testing your new themes and plugins.

That said, I installed 2.8 beta 2 on a test blog today, and it rocks. Here are five things I love about it:

New Template Tag: the modified author
If you run a blog with multiple authors who regularly modify posts, you’ll love this. It basically allows you to display the name of the last person who modified a particular post. Useful, too, if your blog has been around for a long time, and you’re updating someone else’s posts from years ago.

Instant Feed Links
It’s no secret that I adore feeds. One very awesome thing 2.8 does is automatically add feed links specific to the page being viewed. It does this for category archives, author archives- whatever your poison. This is great for your readers, who might want to subscribe to only a certain author’s posts on your blog.

Better Widget Management
I mean seriously better. See:

Wordpress Widget Manager

The drag-n-drop is smooth (even on my Safari, where I always had trouble before), and the new design just makes more sense.

Better Javascript Loading
Does anyone not use javascript these days? WordPress 2.8 gives you the delightful ability to add javascript includes at the bottom of your pages. Why is this delightful? Because it ultimately means faster page loading times- always a good thing. You can learn more about the changes here.

Better Theme Installer
This one’s my favorite. Have a look at the screenshot below:

Wordpress Theme Installer

That’s right, you can search through themes according to color, columns, width, etc.- and basically spend hours finding just the perfect theme for your blog.

Have you installed WordPress 2.8? What do you like/hate about it?

Five Tools for Better Blogging

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Blogging is, at its heart, writing- and the beauty of writing is that it can be done with the most basic of tools: a pen and a piece of paper- and having something to say in the first place, of course.

Thanks to the awesomeness of technology, however, we have a lot of writing tools- a lot of blogging tools- at our disposal these days. These are tools that make the business of blogging a bit easier, and maybe a little more enjoyable. Here are five of my favorites:

TextExpander (Mac OS X). Most bloggers spend a lot of time copying and pasting- and I used to, until I discovered this gem of an application. It’s basically a text replacement program, giving you customized abbreviations for bits of code and text- even images- that you use often. For Windows, try Lifehacker’s Texter.

Google Docs. Since discovering Google Documents, I use it for almost all my writing- and that includes blog post drafts. Yes, even this one. I was particularly grateful for this when my Macbook died last week, and I had to work on an old PC for a few days- all my documents were accessible, online, on Google Docs.

Twitter. That’s right, I consider Twitter one of my favorite blogging tools, because not only can I use Twitter to blog (with the excellent Twitter Tools WordPress Plugin), I get a lot of ideas for blog posts from the people I follow. I use Twhirl to keep updated.

Nisus Thesaurus (Mac OS X). Sometimes, the right word is on the tip of your tongue- and you need a good thesaurus to remember what it is. This nifty little application is free, and features over 120,000 words. For Windows, try WordWeb Free or the FreeThesaurus Firefox plugin.

MyMind (Mac OS X). As any writer knows, procrastination is one of our worst enemies. It’s like there are so many things to do instead of writing. The next time this happens to you, when you’re staring at a blank page, stumped on what to write, may I suggest you try some mind-mapping? Many times, I’ve found that it’s the only thing that will get my thoughts in order, and the writing just flows after that. I like MyMind, which is free for the Mac- but also check out FreeMind, which is multi-platform (and free as well).

What are your favorite blogging tools? Do you use any of my favorites?

Writing RSS-Reader Friendly Posts

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I’ve mentioned before how much I depend on and love RSS feeds. Google Reader is one of those tabs I always have open in Firefox. And with literally hundreds of posts to look through, I’m  inevitably drawn to those that look interesting- by that, I’m not just talking about a catchy title (although that always helps!)- I mean posts that are formatted well.

The thing is, because RSS Readers are not web browsers, they strip your content down to- well, to just your content. As a subscriber to your RSS feed, I don’t get to see your fancy background or your jazzy sidebars or your 500-pixel-tall header. In RSS Readers, content is truly king. Here are some tips on formatting your next blog post:

  • Headers and sub-headers are your friends. When writing a blog post, I like to think less New Yorker, more Reader’s Digest. By adding headers and sub-headers to the different parts of your post, you break up the monotony- and allow your reader to jump to another section if he/she so chooses.
  • Use lists. See what I’m doing here? By formatting these tips as a list, I’m separating them from the rest of the post- so again, you don’t just see paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Because you’re expecting tips, your eyes can go straight to the list, knowing that’s where the meat of the post probably is.
  • Write shorter paragraphs. You know not to be afraid of white space- and that goes for the space between paragraphs too. Yes, it’s all about breaking up those loooooong paragraphs that look boring (even though they may not be).
  • Watch how you align your images. The safest way is to put your image on one line, with a nice strong break before the following text. If you must do the left or right align thing, you should be using CSS anyway.
  • Publish full posts. Okay, so that doesn’t have much to do with formatting- I just had to sneak it in there. Please, please publish full posts in your RSS feeds.

Do you have any tips on formatting posts? What types of posts catch your eye in your RSS reader?

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