Posted on June 29, 2009 at 3:06 am as CMS
Weblog software is designed to simplify the creation and maintenance of weblogs. As specialized content management systems, weblog applications support the authoring, editing, and publishing of blog posts and comments, with special functions for image management, web syndication, and moderation of posts and comments.
We all know WordPress is one the most popular weblog applications. What other options can we choose? We have collected the following Top Quality Weblog Software Other Than WordPress for you.
Melody is an open source content management, blogging and publishing platform, derived from the popular blogging tool Movable Type. At its onset, Melody is distinct from Movable Type by having put in place a set of processes that assist the greater Movable Type and Melody communities to contribute features, changes and fixes more freely and quickly back to the core product. This allows independent developers to pursue the features and preferences that matter to them most.
The promise of Melody is to serve its community by working to build a product according to the principles and philosophies that have helped make WordPress, Apache, Linux, Firefox and other open source applications so successful. Those principles include creating and fostering open communication channels with its user base, by building transparency into its roadmap, and by permitting users to more freely contribute back to the core product.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://openmelody.org/
When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web – a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations – ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint.
Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system and it is both free and open source. Textpattern is a web application designed to help overcome these and other hurdles to publishing online, and to simplify the production of well-structured, standards-compliant web pages.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.textpattern.com/
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL (â€General Public Licenseâ€) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://drupal.org/
Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams with the following main features. Built from the ground up to be as simple as possible, Radiant features an elegant administrative interface that centers around three key components: pages, snippets, and layouts.
Radiant is licensed under the MIT License. This means that Radiant is free for commercial and non-profit use. It also means that you are free to modify and distribute Radiant as long as you don’t remove the appropriate notices from the source code.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://radiantcms.org/
Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS, a well known Ruby on Rails application. Frog CMS share the goal to simplify content management, and offer an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions and all what you need for your files management.
Frog requires a MySQL database with InnoDB support, a web server (Apache with mod_rewrite is highly recommended) and is distributed under the MIT software license.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.madebyfrog.com/
XOOPS is an acronym of eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Though started as a portal system, XOOPS is in fact striving steadily on the track of Content Management System. It can serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites.
A lite XOOPS can be used as a personal weblog or journal. For this purpose, you can do a standard install, and use its News module only. For a medium site, you can use modules like News, Forum, Download, Web Links etc to form a community to interact with your members and visitors. For a large site as an enterprise one, you can develop your own modules such as eShop, and use XOOP’s uniform user management system to seamlessly integrate your modules with the whole system.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.xoops.org
The Movable Type Open Source Project was announced in conjunction with the launch of the Movable Type 4 Beta on June 5th, 2007. The MTOS Project is a community and Six Apart driven project that will produce an open source version of the Movable Type Publishing Platform that will form the core of all other Movable Type products.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.movabletype.org
MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child’s play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts – hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging “Web 2.0? sites today, with its pre-integrated MooTools, Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries. If you’re a CSS designer or Ajax aficionado, this is the CMS for you; and if you like what you see today, you’ll love what’s coming.
Techies call MODx a Content Management Framework (”CMF“): equal parts custom web app builder and Content Management System (”CMS“). With a flexible API and a robust event override system, MODx makes building engaging web projects straightforward — or changing core functionality without hacking the core code possible. Custom tweaks won’t leave you pulling out your hair when it’s time to upgrade.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.modxcms.com/
sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven content management system. Consisting of only one small core file, sNews is extremely lightweight, easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface.
With sNews you can create a website that consists of dynamic pages and have a blog at the same time. sNews has a front page option and categories for you to categorize your articles. Corporate CMS or a personal blog – your choice.
sNews uses search engine friendly URLs throughout, to make your website truly loved by Google and other search engines (as well as your visitors). This makes a sNews driven site highly Search Engine Optimized from the get-go and will greatly assist in your site obtaining a good SEO ranking.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://snewscms.com/
OpenCms from Alkacon Software is a professional, easy to use website content management system. OpenCms helps content managers worldwide to create and maintain beautiful websites fast and efficiently.
The fully browser based user interface features configurable editors for structured content with well defined fields. Alternatively, content can be created using an integrated WYSIWYG editor similar to well known office applications. A sophisticated template engine enforces a site-wide corporate layout and W3C standard compliance for all content.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.opencms.org/

ocPortal is a CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create and manage your interactive and dynamic website from an easy to use administration interface. ocPortal is unique by the combination of a vast and diverse range of provided functionality, out-of-the-box usability, and an ability for unlimited customisation.
ocPortal is completely free under an OSI-approved Open Source licence since version 4.0. There are no restrictions on usage, and they don’t keep away any features from users.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://ocportal.com/
Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.
Habari strongly favors open, standard, and documented protocols. Atom, being both open and documented, is the prefered syndication format, and the Atom Publishing Protocol is the prefered means of remote communication with your site. This is a core feature, and not a plugin.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://habariproject.org
dotCMS Core is the most feature complete open source web CMS available today. Available under the GPL, you can freely download the dotCMS system and get up, running and managing web sites and web content in a matter of minutes.
Unlike many other “open source†cms, dotCMS is in no way crippled. When you download the dotCMS system, you are getting all of the functions and features needed to begin creating customized, manageable and scalable web sites. This includes so called “advanced” features such as LDAP/AD integration, clustering support, online templating, Web2.0 Calendaring and the structured content engine.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.dotcms.org/
Symphony is a web publishing system made for web developers. It gives you all the power and flexibility you’ll need, while keeping out of your way.
Symphony lets you organise everything the way you like, from your publishing environment to your website’s URL structure. Built to be versatile and customisable, Symphony really is what you make of it.
Symphony’s templating engine is pure XSLT goodness. XSLT is a standard recommended by the W3C, so learning Symphony means that you’re learning skills that you can also use outside of the system. If you already know the XML and CSS standards, then chances are you should be able to quickly pick up XSLT.
Pricing: Free
Source: http://symphony-cms.com/
Why would you want to use anything apart from Wordpress?
Wordpress is 99% perfect !
popurls.com // popular today…
story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…
You forgot PivotX.
I would definitely have to put Tumblr on this list too.
wordpress gotta better development process ,
gotta better addon not more than joomla,
early i am The Movable Type paid user wat i get from them hectic
installation, poor support limited addon that make drop the MT and
hold my couch in wp , there can’t stand by being commercial platform
when wp platform rule the web there jump to pool of open source
What about Serendipity? S9y.org
Cool i’m looking forward to test something else other than wordpress. I want to start will drupal, i heard it’s good. Is it?
omfg you forgot to mention dotclear, da best weblog cms
unforgivable
And b2evolution
Seems to me you could have mentioned Dotclear http://dotclear.org
Squarespace? Anyone? Perhaps not as a standalone blog?
“wordpress gotta better development process ,
gotta better addon not more than joomla,”
WTF? This is why it is important to write in English. It generally precludes people from not having a f clue what you mean.
Anyways, Joomla FTW!
“Why would you want to use anything apart from Wordpress?”
Because it’s a huge fail with several webhosts throughout the world…
Sometimes you just update Wordpress and BOOM, your website is crashed and you have to restore the backup files to get your original WP install. Problem is your Install is a huge mess then, and you have plenty of bugs while you used the backup files…
In other words, I’ve seen a lot of bugs in different cases. Even with technical knowledge, they still don’t know how to fix this so they switched to Dotclear, Joomla and so forth or started developping their own system.
Last problematic update I witnessed : no more WYSIWYG editor ( TinyMCE doesn’t work any longer ), no more picture upload ( they have to do it manually via http://FTP... ), no more redirect ( they had to cheat with the index.php file ), no more comments, no more Askimet ( Hail to SPAM ), etc
Unfortunately, it’s not the most extreme case I went through so yeah, I think Wordpress is 99% perfect if it doesn’t crash for no reason… :/
Wow, that’s a lot of CMS that I’ve never heard before (besides Drupal, TextPattern and MovableType). Perhaps you could add ExpressionEngine to the list? I know that EE does require corporate users to pay, but the private and corporate codes are identical.
Speaking of which, IMHO WordPress is still the best
Thank you for sharing this blog software with us.
Also check out http://b2evolution.net
It supports multiple blogs.
its always fun to learn about other CMS’ but I dont think I could ever turn my back on WP
lol Great Post though!
Modx!
What about Dotclear ?
What about Tumblr? I have been using Tumblr for the past year and have yet to find a single thing that I didn’t like.
http://www.tumblr.com
Would suggest grouping Melody and Movable Type together as they’re built on the same codebase, at least for the immediate future. (Melody is essentially a fork of the Movable Type Open Source code)
Paul
I agree with you BeyondRandom… It is fun to learn but WordPress is the way to go!
There are better platforms that are more lightweight, but wordpress is just too powerful with all the plugins and addons and utilities.
It makes no sense to go anywhere else because you’re free to do just about anything with it – while others have licenses barring what can and can’t be done.
But good list anyways.
Where’s the SharePoint love?! And don’t tell me it can’t do blogging! With the right development tools and experience, you can pay to make SharePoint do just about anything!
/sarcasm
Nice blog. But you forgot Expression Engine!
I am a HUGE anti-wordpress coder. And EE is by far my favorite platform. It is more flexible than wordpress, and you have complete control over all of the code.
Wordpress is great for simple blogs that all look the same, but when you want to break out of the norm EE is the way to go.
Plus the ability to do E-commerce in Drupal, and to a lesser extent EE, puts them way above Wordpress in my book.
Plus who wants to do what EVERYONE else does? Too many people use Wordpress just because its a name that is easy to sell, but that does not mean it is the right tool for every project!
MODX should not be on this list, the blogging ‘plugin’ is far to premature to be considered as an alternative to Wordpress.
If you need a blog, go for wordpress. If you want a CMS then textpattern should be your software of choice.
Its ease of use due to the xml like syntax it uses allows any user and/or designer to construct a site in no time. WP is good but very limited. Textpattern’s potential is very understated but its power is undeniable.
I prefer wordpress as for any kind of website
first of all why are some people here naming tumblr as a cms?!?! these people have no clue what they’re saying.
EE is great. but for the price i don’t think its worth it. You can easily do the same things with Textpattern or Symphony cms.
Wordpress’s only strong point is its popularity. Most people just install it and use some pre-made theme and voila. As a cms, it has so many limitations I don’t see how anyone could really offer it as a cms besides for simple brochure sites. Have you ever tried just ordering your links in a specific manner? Yah, no dice (and yes i’ve tried plugins like MyLinkOrder etc etc.) It’s backend looks pretty but is slow and sloppy unless you install google gears, which then breaks features like image uploading. No thanks..
very good!
Wordpress has just recently been considered a CMS, but some argue it isn’t actually one. And there are lots of reasons to opt for a more lightweight or more robust platform. It’s far from the end all be all, although it is good for many sites.
A few reasons you might want to consider something other than Wordpress:
-you don’t want a PHP/MYSQL type of system
-you plan on developing lots of custom functionality and don’t want to wade through the code-bloat that Wordpress imposes
-you need true enterprise level data integration, intelligence, analytics, etc.
-etc.etc.
Very good, Thank you
Wow! There are so many options available. But WordPress is simply great.
Good in-depth review for the CMS beginners who are confused about what to choose.
I personally like wordpress for its simplicity and SEO capabilities provided a very good theme. For more insight into the CMS world read 9 Promising, free and open source CMS reviews
Well, nine list, but Wordpress is definitively NOT A CMS.
And not elegan to work with, what with all the php hooks is the template?
Joomla is too cumbersome.
Anyway, Worpress is by far (for now) the best Blog Engine available, but for serious buisness or website, Drupal Textpattern or MODx are far better than Wordpress.
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