Not long time ago having a website would have been for many a pain in the ass. Developing in HTML, or even using WYSIWYG editors would have taken a while to get your website up and running. Even though What You See Is What You Get editors are still popular among many of us, it’s not practical for dynamic websites, where you add content often and need the power to organize it fast for uploading it to the Internet. The same goes with Blogs, that would be more like a recent Internet invention of the Social Networking.

As in any cases, where there’s a need, the offer won’t take long to appear. Well in this case, I am talking about free offers for you all, as not many are willing to spend much money for your web presence.

In this article I will present you some of the most popular CMS (Content Management System), developed in PHP and with the use of MySQL databases. Don’t be afraid, you don’t need any programing knowledge to use them as they were developed to be user friendly, and best of all, are able to manage large amounts of data with an easy update feature.

We all have special needs, so we have out there more categories of CMS, and modules (add-ons) for these CMS that will enrich the features. Some of these categories would be: portals / directories, forums, blogs, e-commerce, wikis, e-learning, groupwares or image galleries (online photo albums). I will have each of these categories explained to you and I will list the popular ones, so you can make a decision on what to use based on what you need to do ;).

Remember that even thought these CMS are free, they need PHP support and MySQL databases in order to be used, and many features can be customized only when using a paid hosting account. I recommend some web hosting providers to be used with CMS. The list is available here, as I tested 3 of them, but you don’t have to limit only to them.

Portals / directories

Portals or directories are dynamic websites, with a general use rather than something specific such as the next categories. Basically any kind of website can be developed using the CMS in this categories. The difference is that if you want to develop an e-Commerce website you better use a CMS from that category as you will be having more features available from that section.

- Mambo - Mambo is a full-featured content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. The multitude of extensions makes it highly configurable for many purposes, from simple CMS to complex eCommerce websites. (hinch - the Webeki.com website is powered by Mambo)

- Joomla - Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. (hinch - the BETvertiser.com website is powered by Joomla)

Blogs

Blogs it’s like an online diary. However for many of us, this would be a professional or hobby diary, being able to interact with people sharing the same interests. In blogs you can write articles and make them available to the world, just like it would be your own online newspaper.

- WordPress - WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it. (hinch - the Webeki.com Blog is powered by WordPress)

Forums

Forums are useful in creating an online community, where people can come and register to post questions and get answers. It’s a very good solution to offer support to your visitors. Of course, the possibilities for use are limited by our own visions.

- phpBB - phpBB has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. It has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes. With a large and highly customizable set of key features coupled with a standards compliant interface, phpBB will grow with, and compliment your website.

- UseBB - UseBB is a light and Open Source PHP and MySQL based forum package, distributed freely under the GPL license. Developed with simplicity and usability in mind, UseBB is ideal for small to medium sized websites which need a clear and efficient forum package. (hinch - the Webeki.com Forum is powered by UseBB)

e-Commerce

Online commerce became rapidly popular, as being able to order a product or service over the Internet and get it home was an ideal for comfort for many Internet users. For this, many entrepreneurs found it as a good business start having an online store, without the need to work with a physical store and product stocks, that would have been much more expensive. You can even run your online store from home. Developing e-Commerce websites have been expensive until not long ago, but with the use of the following solutions it is a piece of cake.

- osCMax - osCMax is a powerful e-commerce/shopping cart web application. There are many advantages to using osCMax as your e-commerce/shopping cart for your web site. It has all the features needed to run a successful internet store and can be customized to whatever configuration you need.

- Yahoo! Merchant Solutions - Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is complete suite of features for those that want to easily design and maintain an online store. Yahoo! offers for a small fee tools to design your online store, to add products and set up shopping carts, using a reliable platform to market your products and track statistics, fulfill orders and process payments. (this is a PAID solution)

e-Learning

- Caroline - Claroline allows teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web. Developed from teachers to teachers, Claroline is built over sound pedagogical principles allowing a large variety of pedagogical setup including widening of traditional classroom and online collaborative learning.

Groupware

Groupware applications have been developed to organize groups: sales teams, development teams and so on. All teams will have access to the same information, updated in real time by any of its members. For example, sales team can organize tasks such as contacting different partners, posting their results, scheduling suppliers and so on; each member can see what other team member did, so the same task is not in taken by more people that necessary.

- e-GroupWare - eGroupWare is a free enterprise ready groupware software for your network. It enables you to manage contacts, appointments, todos and many more for your whole business. You have the choice to access the eGroupWare server over the Internet with the web browser or with your favorite groupware client (Kontact, Evolution, Outlook) and also with your mobile or PDA via SyncML. It supports over 25 languages.

Wiki

- MediaWiki - MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including the home website of MediaWiki. The software is designed to handle a large number of users and pages without imposing too rigid a structure or workflow.

Image galleries

- Gallery - Gallery is an open source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site.