5 Easy To Use CMS Options

Assuming you are someone who uses a CMS, you may find yourself constantly looking for an easy to use CMS. Whether it be a small or large solution, you're conditioned to always look for something better, no matter what you decide on. A CMS is one of the most important tools to have in your pocket as a web designer/developer. As you may become very comfortable with one CMS, it is always a good idea to have at least two (or more) in your repetitious of CMS skills. Below are, in my opinion, the top 5 best CMS options for designers/developers.

This CMS is a little less-known but, in my opinion, is really starting to make some amazing strides in becoming one of the premier CMS options out there. In late 2009, Expression Engine came out with a new version of their CMS called EE 2.0. This version is still in it's Beta launch, but is proving to be an easy-to use CMS, especially for web designers. The advantage to using Expression Engine is the fact that you get to DESIGN YOUR UNIQUE WEBSITE INTERFACE. In some other CMS's, you need to know a specific language (ie: PHP) in order to be able to truly develop your own CMS-based website from scratch. If you know PHP, you are in good shape. If not, it's very difficult to design your website and then implement a CMS into the design. Expression Engine works the opposite way.

A web designer has the freedom to design a website layout in their favorite design program, code the site using standard XHTML/CSS, and then upload all of the working code to templates in Expression Engine. The next step may take some time to learn, but once you get the basics, the rest just "clicks". Expression Engine uses it's own mark-up language in order to make the "content-management" easy to manage. I will explain this in more detail in a later article, but in the meantime, feel free to visit the Expression Engine 2.0 Beta site to learn more about how EE works. Needless to say, I highly recommend Expression Engine to any web designer/developer. As a matter of fact, this website was built on EE 2.0. 100% of the code on this site is from my hand, no template customization required!

Who hasn't heard of Wordpress? Chances are, if you are a novice in the web world, you've heard about Wordpress and how easy it is to work with. Well, the truth is, that is the truth! Wordpress is an excellent CMS tool for the novice all the way up to an advanced web designer/developer. As Wordpress continues to grow in popularity, the community grows as well. On top of the already stellar interface, Wordpress has a very unique following of web designers and developers who build plugins for Wordpress for FREE. On top of that, the plugins are incredibly easy to ... well ... "plug in" to your Wordpress site. Wordpress will help you set up your site for SEO, analytics, spam protection, and a slew of great features that help your site maintain itself with minimal effort on your end.

There are also a vast number of free templates that you can download and use for your Wordpress site. Again, these are FREE. Someone actually spent time developing a template for the world to use. Again, the community is excellent and willing to build Wordpress add-ons for free to help grow the Wordpress name. There are also templates that are not free, typically known as "premium templates". A premium template is typically much more complex, built to be able to store vast amounts of information and make all of that information easily accessible. I will write about some of the best premium template websites on the net in a later article.

As a web designer/developer, I'm a fan of Wordpress. If I need to build a fairly robust site in a fairly short period of time, chances are there will be the perfect Wordpress template to work with and customize in order to deliver what I and/or my client is looking for.

CushyCMS is certainly one of the lightest and easiest CMS solutions out there. Implementation is very simple, and all you really need to do is provide your FTP information and the CMS will take care of the rest. It is highly recommended that you have some knowledge of CSS. All you need to do is update your CSS in your dashboard and CushyCMS will send it to your FTP server very quickly. Of this list, this is the most basic CMS package and should really be used only on smaller, static-information websites. With that said, it is extremely easy to use and teach, so almost anybody can use it.

This CMS option has only recently jumped into the CMS-world, but has made some excellent strides in becoming a very useful and viable option. Primarily, the installation of this CMS is very quick and painful. Total installation will take around 15 minutes or so, probably even quicker. Who can argue with that?

ImpressCMS also comes with a great theme library and some great javascript/jquery functionality which always allows for some neat looking effects. There are not as many plug-ins for this CMS as the more well-known CMS solutions, but as the community grows, so will the plug-in library. If you are a web designer, consider ImpressCMS as your next solution.

MoveableType is another CMS that has really impressed many with it's bulk of options. The templating system allows you to build the CMS around the design, rather than the other way around. Visually, the user is free to change the look and feel of all aspects of the site, including the control panel itself. Another great feature is the ease with which custom fields can be created, making it very easy to categorize content on the fly. Along with some other high-quality CMS options, you can always pay and upgrade to the more advanced versions of this open-source CMS, which will provide you with an array of great functionality depending on what the site is ultimately for.