Applied Solutions Group

The two biggest CMS Applications out there right now have to be Drupal and Joomla/Mambo. They seem to split the market pretty evenly with Drupal being the choice for most Developers and Joomla being picked by Designers most of the time. There are many other CMS Apps out there and a few like ExpressionEngine are starting to get large followings but here are two interesting ones that you never hear about.

First up is MODx, if you run the demo it looks like every other CMS out there and it leads to worrying about the community and if it will fizzle and die leaving you hanging if there are ever any security bugs discovered. But the coolest part of MODx is that it isn’t just a CMS it is a CMF, a Content Management Framework. ExpressionEngine has gained it’s followers by offering a similiar situation of giving you a working CMS and access to the framework that runs it to build your own web apps with it. In a round about way most CMSs kind of do this but MODx seems to be aiming their App at being like a free ExpressionEngine and even though they are only at a .9 release they already have an immensely busy forum which is a good sign!

Next is Concrete5, I will call it C5 to avoid typing that over and over again for the rest of this. C5 has the tagline of “The best CMS in the world.” I don’t know if I would go that far but I do agree it is nice to see a smaller CMS that is clean looking and with a good admin section for once. I am about to install a C5 after I write this to see what it is about and if it is good then I will post a longer review on it.

The C5 review is a bit short but I am not checking them out for you yet, just giving you an idea of something you might want to check out. So go and download these and if you like them make sure to contribute back to the community and write something or help out in the forums.