There are many CMSs on the market but you need to select the one based on your needs. If you are going to use a CMS for the first time, we recommend you choose a user-friendly CMS that does not add any kind of complexity on your part. What follows is a list of what I believe to be the seven best CMSs for novices.

2012 may indeed be the “Year of Web Content.” Actually, so was 2011, 2010, 2009…  But this article on the Forbes Marketwatch blog describes how some big brands are attacking content marketing and content curation to help fulfill their brand promise.

Amongst content management insiders, there has been an ongoing acronym war over what the technology systems should be called that help companies manage their content online -- which quite frankly, end users care very little about.

At the end of the day, the companies mentioned in the Forbes article, and countless others, want to use content to engage with their customers and prospects to drive their business goals.  And they want their content technologies to help them achieve those goals, not get in the way--regardless of what it’s called.

However there’s a growing disconnect between what’s expected and what’s actually being delivered when it comes to implementing those content systems and the associated costs. Increasingly, companies are questioning what capabilities (or lack of) they’re receiving from their web content systems investments.  As well as, what additional costs of services they’ll need to incur to support, maintain and upgrade what becomes a very complex, highly customized system.

According to a post by The Real Story Group this past spring, web content management system implementation costs have risen to 7-8 times the cost of software licensing.   Perhaps most galling to buyers, the increased ratios are simply stipulated as a fact that buyers should just prepare for. We have heard some form of the following countless times:

Systems are becoming more complex, and to deploy complex systems, it takes time, and your services dollars, and that’s ok. 

CMS websites are now the norm as the preferred content management and delivery solution. Nevertheless, many CMS web applications face scalability issues. However, when a CMS is put in the cloud, it theoretically resolves the scalability issue to obtain a complete benefit.

But, if a cloud platform is not configured to match the particular needs of the CMS, it will need to work harder. This will result in higher loads than what is actually needed to serve the incoming traffic. Therefore, in most cases, it is sensible to cache the static content. The issue that one faces here is whether the cloud is able to tell the difference between a user who has signed into an application and is therefore being served with dynamic content and the one who has not yet signed into the application.

At the same time, a CMS presents many other challenges other than scalability due to the paradigm shift from the traditional model of sharing files from a central repository.  The reason behind this is that websites no longer operate isolated or in standalone mode. They must be able to interact with a range of other business applications that range from ecommerce business solutions to CRM databases to a range of reporting as well as analytics tools. To cut a long story short, websites have become increasingly data and content hungry because of their complex nature and the requirements of their users.

Managing such websites is now a full-time job.  Earlier in the traditional hosting scenario, the site owner had to figure out how to look after the application, but also the servers, backups, databases, and others.  Now, the platforms are specialized, so handling a web application which was a full time job can now be addressed by a person who can pay full-time attention.

The XOOPS Development Team is pleased to announce that a new version, XOOPS 2.5.4 Final, is available for download and testing. The major focus of this release is on updating all Core modules (PM, Profile, Protector) to our new ModuleAdmin GUI, so all of them have a consistent "look & feel".

The World Day of Interconnectedness on November 11, 2011 became a very special for MotoCMS and its users. That day, the company released the new major Version 1.6 of its powerful Flash CMS.

The new version is probably the most significant from all MotoCMS releases - it is 100% based on the users' feedback.

This update introduces many new powerful features and improved functionality, including:

• The ability to protect pages and popups with a password (now you can protect any page of your website).
• The modified and improved "Contact Form" widget (the "Radio Button" and "Text Area" items added).
• The new "Search" widget (place the "Search Field" wherever you need on your website).
• The improved connection of widgets with website content.
• The "Buy Now Button" widget (that will help you to sell goods and services via your Moto CMS website).
• The "Background" widget (that makes it possible to modify the website background by adding images to it or change its color).
  

The latest version of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, Tiki 8.1, is now available for immediate download. This release includes many new features and improved functionality, including more than 3,200 code updates by 43 Tiki Community members. Review the Tiki 8 Release Notes and change log for complete information.

Some key highlights of Tiki 8 include:

• Improved internationalization (i18n), including better support for non-English characters in page names and complete translation of German interface items.
• Improved (AJAX) interface for comments and support for Akismet spam protection
• Integration with WebODF to support Open Document Format (ODF) in Tiki Docs.
• Multiple enhancements to site search, such as indexing improvements, caching, and the ability to export search results as an RSS feed
• Several new Tiki plugins
• Update of the template engine from Smarty 2 to 3
• Security fix, first identified by Stefan Schurtz (http://www.infoserve.de/)

This is just a small sample of what's included in Tiki 8.1. Refer to http://doc.tiki.org/Tiki8 for a full list of what's new.

You can obtain Tiki 8.1 (as well as all other Tiki releases) from http://tiki.org/download. The release of Tiki 8 marks the end-of-life for the Tiki 7.x branch. All Tiki Administrators running 7.x are highly encouraged to upgrade to Tiki 8.1.

Tiki 6.x remains the LTS (Long Term Support) version. For information on this and future Tiki plans, see http://dev.tiki.org/Roadmap.

XOOPS 2.5.4 RC, is available for download and testing. In addition to updating our libraries to their latest versions, the major focus of this release is on updating all Core modules (PM, Profile, Protector) to the new ModuleAdmin GUI for consistent "look & feel":