Best Open Source CMS from design point of view

[Europe calling]

HI,

What would you consider the best open source cms system, solely looking at the ease of use implementing one's own design?
I've tried a few but was never happy with the way i could put in my own design.

 

[Makosuke]

Well, NOT Joomla, anyway. You probably could have figured that out, but I just spent a lot of time playing around with it--templating isn't particularly easy, and while it's ridiculously powerful the admin interface also takes quite a while to get used to. Plone seems to have fans, but it's basically designed to be the main app on a server, so I expect it's out too.

I did a survey a while ago and ran through several, but they were all either too hard to template, not flexible enough, or both, so I ended up with a sort of custom system based on the old WebMake Perl module. Works great for my purposes, but would be a shoddy CMS by most measures, and I'm interested to know if there are any good SIMPLE options out there now.

 

[timmillwood]

drupal is really good.

Drupal 6 has just come out but not many modules support it so it might be better using drupal 5.

 

[amariotti]

Drupal

I have been a Mac user for years and would recommend Drupal over any of the other CMSs. I am now as giddy about Drupal as I am for Macs. I took months to research the different CMSs and finally came out with Drupal in the end. It's a robust CMS that has a lot to offer. Theming is straight forward, and the system all together is very customizable. I would recommend it to anyone!

I think that what timmillwood meant to say was you're probably better off going with Drupal 5.x for the time being until more modules are supported in 6.x. Good luck!

 

[Photomax]

I tested a bunch of CMS systems. I downloaded and experimented with Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, CMSMadeSimple and MODx.

If you are going to do more or less straight blogging then Wordpress is the system for you. If you need more CMS functionality for adding users, permissions and other cool things then one of the many CMS systems will serve. I only mention a few here; there are a tons of CMS systems to choose from.

Different people will want different things from a CMS. Some will want robust "out the box performance" with every possible module available. If you are in this camp then Drupal is a worthy contender. If you want a light CMS that is pretty simple without having to wade through a zillion modules then CMSMadeSimple may be a good choice.

If you like to design sites on your own and know your way around coding and creating custom CSS then MODx is great.

Most CMS systems use themes etc for the presentation. The Drupal and Joomla camps offer a huge amount of different themes to try. But what if you want to create your own style? This is where it gets tricky. Most folks use "backwards engineering" to strip down an existing theme, switch graphics and patch it up again - hardly a honest custom creation of your own.

For this reason I like MODx. Its more of a developer framework that is very friendly to customization. The guys behind MODx like to refer MODx as not being a "YAPS": yet another portal system.

Bottom line is that all of these systems have a required learning curve. Somewhere along the way you will have to roll up your sleeves and do some work. The more you want the end project to be your unique creation the more work and learning you will have to do.