Category: Web Development

And you thought there are only three. This is my Twelfth post in this series. It is a convenient list, a one stop shop if you like, of the best free self-hosted Content Management Systems available these days.

What is a Content Management System?

A CMS or more specifically a Web Content Management System is a software system that provides Website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of Web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage Website content with relative ease. A robust WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a database to store page content, metadata, and other information.

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.

For this post, I followed three criteria for choosing the best Content Management Systems.

1. Free.
2. In active development: still being updated and maintained (at least since 2010).
3. In my opinion, the best.

Place your cursor over each image and link for a short description. Also try out the CMS software demos before you install. All links are External. Good Luck!

1. PHP based

The following Content Management Systems are mainly written in PHP scripting language. Your Web server must be capable of running PHP among other technical requirements.

1. Joomla
2. SPIP
3. WordPress
4. Drupal
5. CMS Made Simple
6. Typo3
7. Concrete5
8. Textpattern
9. e107
10. SilverStripe
11. GetSimple
12. Symphony
13. sNews
14. Contao
15. Kajona
16. Wolf CMS
17. Pligg

Really Unique CMS Groupware

Tiki is one of the most feature-rich CMS packages. In fact, Tiki is the Open Source Web Application with the most built-in features. Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, has all the integrated features you need “out-of-the-box”, like:

• Wikis (like Wikipedia)
• Forums (like phpBB)
• Blogs (like WordPress)
• Articles (like Yahoo News)
• Image Gallery (like Flickr)
• Map Server (like Google Maps)
• Link Directory (like DMOZ)
• Multilingual (like Babel Fish)
• Bug Tracker (like Bugzilla)
• RSS Feeds (like Digg)
• Free Open Source software (LGPL)

2. Java based

The following CMS is written in Java programming language.

1. OpenCms

3. ASP.NET based

The following 2 Content Management Systems are based on the ASP.NET framework.

1. DotNetNuke
2. MonoX

4. Python based

Plone CMS is mainly written in Python programming language. There are also other languages used within the project.

1. Plone

5. Ruby based

The following 3 Content Management Systems are written in Ruby programming language as a Ruby on Rails Web application

1. Radiant
2. Refinery
3. BrowserCMS

6. Perl based

Movable Type is mainly written in Perl programming language. PHP scripting language is also used for dynamic publishing.

1. Movable Type

Your Turn to Talk

There are many more free Content Management Systems that did not make the list. Which CMS do you use? Do you have any others you think I should add? or anything else to say?

To run a successful website, you need a concoction of several methodologies which combined pour in the best results for you. Now, among all those significant methodologies, collecting data pertaining to your website’s users – new and existing – is right up there among the most effective methods. And when you talk of collecting data and fetching the feedback from your users, contact form is the go-to source.

Due to the irreplaceable role played by contact forms that webmasters unfailingly rely on them for getting a good enough idea of whom they are interacting with and whether the service they are providing echoes with the requirements of their visitors. And that’s where creating highly interactive and sleek contact forms comes into play, since it remains a fact that humdrum forms hardly capture the attention of users and end up being totally ignored.

Now, from the last few years, owing to the rising importance of creating great contact forms, PHP has played a pivotal role since the PHP-built contact forms give the webmasters a whole array of options at their behest. That said, even though they are functionally very rich and accomplished, the overall visual appeal lacks in certain respects that eventually leads to not so great numbers being achieved. For many websites, the contact form is a direct way to the conversion rates or the lack of it, so with each user not deciding to fill the contact form, they lose a potential customer. Thus, with PHP already being well equipped to build fully functional forms, let’s see how we can add an attractive visual interface to the form. And what’s better than having something that looks like the iPhone slider – abundantly sleek and user friendly.

Features of the iPhone Slider Contact Form

As an example, let’s take the contact form shown in the picture at the beginning of this post. The form looks suave and tailored for user friendliness, and the “Slide to Send” button further adds to both the facets.

What this contact form essentially has is a Javascript validation. This validation ensures that the loading of the page fails when you are putting in data that does not follow certain patterns or is required. One of the features that makes this form even more significantly important is the fact that you do not need Captcha with it, since the Slide to Send feature works as a perfect replacement. So if you are already wondering how to prevent spam from pouring in without Captcha, rest assured that this slide button will do the job in a highly efficient manner. You won’t need Captcha or any other anti comment spammer tool.

As far as the styling of the form is concerned, it gets its styling from the rich CSS3 language. It is not a concealed fact anymore that CSS3 can help you build awesome designs of which are not possible with other languages or with the previous CSS versions.

Now, what we have done with the form to make it even more dynamic, usable and attractive, we have gone on to adding Google Map feature to it, that takes its functional abilities to a new level. You can make the necessary changes to the google Map, depending on your location.

All you got to do is to is to upload the files (DEMO IS AT THE END OF THIS POST) to your web server and make some tweaks to the mailfunction.php file located in the process folder.

Since you are not able to view the source code of the “mailfunction.php” file, I am including the code below. There are 2 lines of code that you need to change: Line 4 with your email address and Line 25, replace ‘WEBSITENAME’ with your domain name.

  <?php
    //email receiver and subject//
    $emailSubject = 'Slide to Send Contact Form Response';
    $sendemailto = 'name@domain.com';  /*** Change this to your email address ***/
     
    //declare our assets//
    $nameField = $_POST['name'];
    $emailField = $_POST['email'];
    $phoneField = $_POST['phone'];
    $companyField = $_POST['company'];
    $addressField = $_POST['address'];
    $messageField = $_POST['message']; 
     
    $body = <<<EOD
<br><br>
Name: $nameField <br>
Email: $emailField <br>
Phone: $phoneField <br>
Company: $companyField <br>
Address: $addressField <br>
Message: $messageField <br>
EOD;
 
/*** Change 'WEBSITENAME' to your DOMAIN name ***/
    $headers = 'From: '.WEBSITENAME.'' . "\r\n" .
    'Reply-To: '.$emailField.'' . "\r\n" .
    'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
    $success = mail($sendemailto, $emailSubject, $body, $headers);
     
if($success){
   echo 'OK';
 }
else{
   echo 'NOT OK';
}           
?>

Changing the Google Map

Below is the google Map code that I am using in the index.html file. I am using Boston, MA as a reference point. You can choose your preferable location in Google Maps. On the embed link option, simply replace the link source of your choice.

<!--Google Map Iframe.-->           
<iframe width="96%" height="150" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m19!1m12!1m3!1d94411.73947848775!2d-71.05715705!3d42.31337345!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!4m4!1i0!3e1!4m0!4m0!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1422794887869" style="border:0"></iframe><br />