10 Lightweight and Easy to Use Open-Source CMS

Sam Deering
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A Content Management System (CMS) with too many features is not always the best option for every web design project, sometimes all you need is something with a smaller and really lightweight. So we have collected a list of “light” (not literally lightweight but simpler systems) for you and your clients to manage content in harmony!

Obviously, WordPress is not mentioned here but is in my opinion the best Free, Open Source CMS going right now.

1. Zimplit CMS

Extremely lightweight, simple, customizable and open-source. It’s very easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface and it consists of only one core engine file.
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2. CMS from Scratch


Is a quick, easy, and open-source solution that lets web designers give their customers a web site they can edit themselves.
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3. PageLime


Is a hosted Content Management System (CMS) for designers, web agencies, and web developers. It allows you to manage text, images, and documents on your site by logging into a web-app that’s hosted on our servers.
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4. CMS Made Simple


Is an open source ( GPL) package, built using PHP that provides website developers with a simple, easy to use utility to allow building small-ish (dozens to hundreds of pages), semi-static websites.
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5. CushyCMS


It’s built from the ground up with ease of use in mind – for both content editors and designers. It’s such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement.
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6. Zotonic


Is a fast, easy to use and open-source CMS. Its extensible, flexible and has been built from the ground up with rich internet applications and web publishing in mind. It can also work as a framework that is easy to extend and adapt for your specific use.
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7. sNews


Is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. It is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface.
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8. Radiant CMS


Is an open source CMS designed for small teams that has been built from the ground up to be as simple as possible, featuring an elegant administrative interface that centers around three key components: pages, snippets, and layouts.
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9. Pixie


It uses the latest web standards so whatever site you build, it’s accessible to all your visitors and is search engine friendly and you will love the fact that all you need to know is CSS to customize your site.
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10. Symphony


Symphony leverages open standards like XML and XSLT, and good old XHTML and CSS. Even the admin interface employs the widely-used jQuery library, so extension developers don’t have to learn a whole new framework when extending the back end.
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