Test Drive a Bunch of Open Source Content Management Systems

Now THIS is a marvelous idea. Put a bunch of content management systems online with screenshots, and descriptions. Make the admin passwords public so that anyone can log in and "test-drive" the system. Delete and reinstall each system every two hours. It's called opensourceCMS.com and you can get to at http://opensourcecms.com/ , natch.

The front page has announcements and news. The list of CMS is on the left side of the page and is divided into categories: portals, blogs, e-commerce, groupware, forums, e-learning, misc, and Wiki.

Pick one. You'll get a user rating, a pointer to the application's home page, and a screen shot. (Screen shots are a bit small.) There's also space for comments on the application and some "things you must know" information (sometimes opensourceCMS may disable certain software features for security reasons.) Finally there's a link to the front page and a link to the admin page, with an admin user name and password.

I chose WordPress, and logged in to the admin page, wandering around and checking the setup. When I came back to the front page I looked at the WordPress forum but it wasn't active; as a matter of fact most of the forums I looked at weren't very active. But there are user comments about many of the applications on their information pages.

If you're interested at all in CMS, even if you want to try something that's not open source, visit this site. It's an excellent way to get a feel for how CMS are put together and run without having to install anything yourself. Highly recommended.

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