If you are still living in a no-man’s-land and don’t know what the heck a imageCMS is then here’s the definition (rest of you please skip to the list): CMS or Content Management System, as the name implies, manages your content on your website/blog. Management here means, creating web pages, blog posts, updating, editing and deleting them, putting widgets and scripts and almost everything you can do to your web pages can be managed easily using a CMS which is normally installed on the hosting you purchase. CMS comes with an admin  panel which normally has pretty simple straight forward interface for everyone to understand and use and this is where the distinction between different CMS’s comes in. Here is the list of top 5 OpenSource meaning you can edit the CMS itself and tailor it to your needs.

1) WordPress – Best for Blogs
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There’s absolutely no doubt that WordPress is the king of all CMS and not just those which are Open Source. The best thing about it is that it’s Open Source! Developed by a 22 year old developer, WordPress is the number one choice of any blogger and some of the best blogs on internet are run on WordPress. WordPress is search engine friendly and pretty secure and offers a wide range of widgets and plug-ins to enhance it’s functionality.

2) Water CMS – Best for Small Businesses
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The best thing about WaterCMS is that it’s primarily targeted at getting your small business UP on the web with just a few clicks! They offer sleek business templates for free and there’s an easy 3-step process to set up your 3 page business website complete with payment transaction options right on the site and a lot of widgets to enhance the UserExperience. It’s also search engine friendly which means your brand gets good exposure to search engine bots that index your pages on the web.

You can even create Members Only Content which will be locked for non members! Not only this but they also offer hosting the site on their servers for free! (of course with their name)

3) ClearNetwork – Best for Setting up eCommerce Website
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Yet another elegant free open source CMS. If you are developing a solution for the client or thinking on getting a product gallery set up with payment system embedded then ClearNetwork is the right choice. Here are some screenshots of different great features on offer here:

Dashboard
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This is how your portfolio/product listing will look like (you can try different themes too)
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4) Mambo – Best for Corporate Websites
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This award winning CMS has a really huge developer base and benefits from unique contributions from experienced developers who continue to add value to Mambo. You can design a simple 5 page website as well as a complex data-driven and transactions enabled corporate website and get it up and running with Mambo. The reason it’s suited for Corporate websites is it’s reliability which others are reluctant to guarantee, even though they also claim their CMS is reliable.

5) OpenCMS – a true Java based CMS

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The reason I have mentioned Java based is uniqueness. Almost all existing CMS are either coded in PHP or ASP but what Java has to offer is a lot more and most of it revolves around reliability as Java is fault tolerant and rarely will fail even under intense traffic spikes. OpenCMS is pretty much suited for any kind of website, either a small personal website or large corporate one, you can rely on OpenCMS to manage your web presence.
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