A recent search for a list of CMSs, which could explain to students the architecture and structure of a complex web site, led me to a curious article on the classification of CMS , which, however, is currently a bit outdated, and written a little messy. This prompted me to compile a new review, gathering more solutions and adding them, if possible, with links to official websites, download pages and demo panels.

I considered CMS on php, mostly free, with some exceptions. As a result, at the moment we have such a set:

General Purpose CMS : Alto CMS, Cogear, Contao, Cotonti, DataLifeEngine, Drupal, ImageCMSCorporate, Joomla, Host CMS, MaxSiteCMS, MODX, MosquitoBloodyMary, ReloadCMS, Wordpress
Galleries : Coppermine, Gallery (Gallery2, updated to version 3), Koken, MG2 = MiniGal 2, Pikateka, SimpleViewer, Zenphoto
Social networks : Elgg, Explay CMS, InstantCMS, LiveStreet, BigStreet
Forums : IPB (Invision Power Board), Phorum, phpBB, phpBBex, PunBB, Simple Machines Forum, Vanilla, vBulletin
Online Shops : ECShop, Magento, OpenCart, osCommerce Family, Prestashop
Business cards without a SQL database : GetSimple, Monstra, Nanote, Stacey, CMS Maker

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General Purpose CMS

Alto CMS

Alto CMS is a multifunctional content management system.

Alto CMS is a modern engine for creating websites for various purposes. It uses the MVC (Model-Viewer-Controller) paradigm based on OOP. The code is written in PHP 5.3+, as a database can be used as MySQL (mysqli / PDO), and PostgreSQL.

Using the very popular Smarty 3+ template engine makes it easy to change the appearance of the site. To do this, you can use both ready-made template sets, and develop your own, based on your unique design.

Features:

• Comfortable functional admin panel
• Creating pages, articles, categories, sections
• Custom content types with any set of fields
• Registration by invitation only
• Closed site mode
• Expansion of functionality with the help of free and paid plug-ins
• Create photo reports and polls
• Commenting system
• Rating system of articles, blogs, users
• Collective private messaging system
• Closed blogs, invited only
• Team and personal blogs

Description
Download
Github

Cogear

The second version of the engine is positioned as a universal designer for all types of sites. The basic version has the ability to create a business card site and a personal blog. Further, the functionality can be changed or expanded with the help of components called “gears”. In essence, these are the same plug-ins and modules, however, they have much more features than these.

Features of the engine:

• Modular architecture. Installation / removal of modules in one click.
• A wide range of application systems. The distribution provides the ability to create a community with multi-user blogs, but thanks to the extensible architecture of the engine's transformation capabilities, there are a great many.
• Flexible hook system. Allows you to modify any controllers and models without affecting their code.
• Open source.
• Internationalization.
• Automatic loading of classes / models.
• Optimize download speed (combining CSS and JavaScript files).
• Tag support caching (works with file system and memcached).
• Ability to load styles and scripts for certain browsers (goodbye IE6).
• Own template making it possible to work with PHP-Native.
• Detailed documentation, including PDF.

Official site
Download
Demo

Contao

Universal CMS, which is characterized by the fact that, unlike other systems, many functions are already built into the system and do not require installation of additional extensions.

Main features

• generate strong XHTML code
• generates search engine friendly links, dynamic headers and complete META data
• support of many browsers (IE from version 5.5, Firefox from version 1.0, Netscape from version 7, Opera from Version 7)
• using Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies
• integrated file manager, search engine and form generation
• multilingual backend support built on templates
• generating XHTML code completely based on templates
• version management, revision and version return function
• documentation in several languages ​​(English, German)
• 25 languages ​​supported using UTF-8 encoding
• Liveupdate

Official site
Download

Cotonti

Cotonti architecture allows you to use it to create different types of sites: from business cards and news sites to directories, forums and portals. The functionality of the system is provided by the core and embedded modules, as well as plug-ins.

The key difference of Cotonti is the fact that the system is being developed and improved not only by project managers and the development team, but also by a community of enthusiasts who are developing additional extensions (plug-ins), themes (skins) and localization packages.

The Cotonti core includes the following modules:

• a module for managing pages and page categories, which allows you to create a convenient tree-like category system for materials published on the website
• user account registration and management module
• forum module
• polls module (includes the ability to create polls in the forums)
• private messaging module
• File Upload Module in Personal File Space
• RSS support module for page categories, comments and forums
• plug-in support module
• human-readable URL (CNC) module
• site control module

The Cotonti distribution includes extensions (plug-ins) of the news feed, search, tag support for pages and forums, etc.

Cotonti allows you to control user interface languages ​​(set the default language, switch languages ​​on the fly, or disable such switching). The base kit Cotonti includes English and Russian site localization. On the project support site, localization packages are available for download in the following languages:

• Dutch
• Italian
• Deutsch
• Polish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

Official site
Download

DataLifeEngine

DataLifeEngine is a commercial content management software. This is a multiplayer news engine designed to organize your own blogs and media on the Internet. Thanks to an accurate and well-thought-out kernel structure, which minimizes server resource requirements, the engine is able to work with high-visited projects with ease, without creating any special load on the server.

The cost of a license for one domain is $ 59 for a one-year purchase, the license renewal for the second year is $ 39, for additional support, the client is offered to pay $ 19.

After purchasing the script, the client is provided with an open source product and no limit on the time of use (in the case of an annual license, after a year, the client will stop receiving updates.
Official site

Drupal

The engine that can do everything, to which there is a lot of plug-ins for all occasions.

The main advantage of the drupal is a very developed and thoughtful hook system that allows you to override almost any system event. Plus, the two most popular modules, cck and views, allow you to construct arbitrary data types and their display.
In the minuses the greater complexity of this system. And yet in the minuses serious gluttony, no less, and sometimes more than similar engines.
Description
Download

ImageCMS Corporate

Modern, free Web 3.0 OpenSource system for creating and managing web projects of any format.

To create corporate sites, ImageCMS has:

• a set of basic basic modules, convenient template architecture;
• all popular opportunities for website optimization for search engines;
• the function of translating text into other languages;
• secure code and easy administrative part;
• editor template from the administrator part.

Due to the “Field Designer” module, the system allows you to build complex database architectures directly from the administrative panel and create powerful portals based on ImageCMS.

The system includes a set of modules:

• Configuration and core of the corporate site
• Multilingual
• Caching system
• The event log
• Backup
• Categories
• Content
• Field constructor
• Menu
• Users
• Gallery
• Comments
• Sending letters
• RSS feed
• Site Map
• Template Editor
• Users support
• Voting Module
• Widget set

There are paid versions of the engine:

ImageCMS Shop Pro is designed to create powerful online stores. This content management system makes it easy to create complex and functional online stores. It combines absolutely all the functions that are used in 90% of the existing stores in the CIS, as well as corresponding to the needs of the western market.

ImageCMS Shop Premium is a special build with advanced features for the most demanding customers, with additional functionality for a large store (multilingual, access rights), and contains comprehensive technical support + synchronization with 1C.
Opportunities
Download
Demo
Comparison with paid versions

Joomla

The current version of Joomla! 3.1. An important feature of the system is the minimum set of tools during the initial installation, which is supplemented as needed.

Features:

• The functionality can be increased with the help of additional extensions (components, modules and plug-ins).
• There is a security module for multi-level authentication of users and administrators (using its own authentication algorithm and "conduct" sessions).
• The template system allows you to easily change the appearance of the site or create your own unique one. In the network there is a huge selection of ready-made templates, both paid and free.
• There are customizable layout of modules, including left, right, center and any other arbitrary position of the block. If desired, the module content can be included in the content of the material.
• Starting with version 1.6 multi-language is built in.
• Starting with version 2.5, database support has been extended. Implemented support for Microsoft SQL Server, and from version 3.0 - PostgreSQL

Download
Demo
Demo login and demo password

Host CMS

HostCMS is an online content management system. The system is developed and maintained by Hostmayk LLC. Distributed under the open source proprietary license. It is one of the oldest CMS in the Russian market.

It has built-in ORM, QueryBuilder query builder, helpers. Uses AJAX technology in the client section and central administration. Since version 6.0, it provides the ability to edit the content of pages without going to the central administration.

Free version of "Freebie"
The free edition includes the following modules:

• Kernel HostCMS
• System installer
• Automatic system update
• Site structure
• Pages and Documents
• Search engine promotion (SEO)
• Online Store Information Systems
• Typical dynamic pages
• Visual editor
• Printer
• Tags (tag cloud)
• Sites
• Central Administration Users
• Modules
• Layouts
• Xsl templates
• SQL queries
• IP addresses
• Central Administration Forms
• Constants

Comparison of free and planned editions
Download free version

MaxSiteCMS

Universal, easy and fast content management system. The basic functionality is expanded with plug-ins and widgets, and the appearance with templates.

• Plug-ins, as a rule, have a lot of different settings and options. MaxSite CMS completely undertakes all the work of storing, updating and organizing options.
• Widgets (widgets) - these are plugins that are displayed on the site in the sidebar (sidebar). The widget API allows you to create them effortlessly.
• Unlike other systems, there can be an unlimited number of widgets of the same type in MaxSite CMS. For widgets, you can specify arbitrary display conditions, for example, only on the main page.
• Includes 79 plug-ins, many universal plugins.

The structure and clarity of the engine is initially blogging, but as the example of the same wordpress shows, this is not a limitation. Benefits: good architecture and strong caching give good performance, convenience when writing extensions - the entire service part of the system assumes the flexibility of settings - the conditions for displaying widgets, building links, designing data types allow you to make websites very different in structure from blogs.
Opportunities
Download
Github

MODX

There are two versions:
Evolution is a “clean” distribution kit adapted according to the completely rewritten Revolution engine.
Revolution is a completely object-oriented engine rewritten from scratch. It removed the limitations and problems found in the previous version of the engine.

Embedded tools

• User registration system
• Built-in search on AJAX
• Site menu generation system
• Commenting system (with moderation and subscription)
• Generation of directories / blogs / news, etc.
• Short URLs
• Modular design support:
• Support for XHTML 1.0 Strict specifications
• WYSIWYG editor (TinyMCE - as an add-on)

Benefits

• The main advantage - full control over the output of HTML-code, the separation of the logic of the CMS and design
• Easy extensibility, the ability to create program code in snippets, modules and plug-ins, as well as connect the Template Variable (TV) parameters to create additional fields
• Support AJAX, MooTools, prototype
• Web Graphic Installer
• PHP 4.3.11 and above support
• Cross-browser and cross-platform work
• Can be installed on IIS, Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd and Zeus web servers
• Placement in the cloud through Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) possible
• Recursive parser for nested functionality
• Full control over all metadata and URL structure for search engine optimization
• MVC Compatibility (Model-View-Controller)
• Access control and assignment of rights to access the site manager ACL
• Ability to customize the manager to the needs of the customer.
• Repository of ready extensions

MODX Revolution Description
Demo moved to MODX Cloud

MosquitoBloodyMary

Minimalistic open source system (GPL v3 & above) written in php and not using mysql (uses files as a database). Supports plugins and templates. It is quite easy to use, besides it has the basic capabilities of a CMS and contains user friendly documentation for creating plugins.

The engine is installed using the installer. Then absolutely all control is done through the interface.

Some of the CMS features in the basic delivery of the MosquitoBloodyMary blog engine are:

• Entries in which you can choose the time of publication, the lifetime, the time until which the entry will be hidden
• Drafts
• Reverse sorting of records - old top (blog book)
• Visual editor (WYSIWYG) nicedit for records (in the default template)
• Hide posts from RSS
• RSS feeds, tags, comments for a specific post and comments for all posts
• Easy CNC
• Ability to set the start (welcome) page or the main tag that will be displayed on the main page
• 2 page turning options (list of pages or links to previous and next pages)

Plugins in basic delivery:

• Tags add tags to records and different output tags for blocks
• Topics designed to create attached entries that are always at the top and not displayed in the general list
• mscat are simple categories.
• blocks - editing, creating blocks, working with pages. As well as a few blocks as an example and used in the template by default:
  
  • Menu (works through mscat), admin menu, header, footer, and other trivia for the default template
  • RSS Subscription Block
  • Related entries.
  • The last notes
  • Frequently used tags
  • Round dance friends blogroll
  • latest comments
  
  

Opportunities
Download

ReloadCMS

ReloadCMS is a database-free content management system written in PHP. Among the main features: ease of installation and administration, modular architecture (with a simple and accessible API for any newbie), multilingualism, skins, templates, separation of design from presentation, many built-in and third-party modules, friendly support. The system has been specifically designed for small and medium-sized projects that require a CMS, which will work even on cheap hosting tariffs.

Key features:

• All data is stored in files, so no database server is required.
• A large number of standard modules - articles, news, archive files, statistics, forum, gallery, etc.
• Good security system. Integrated IDS.
• Easy localization - you can translate not only the interface, but the entire content of the site.
• Template support: just create your own website design using the template system.
• Flexible system of modules: if you did not find the module in the standard package, you can simply create your own.

Opportunities
Download
Github

Wordpress

WordPress is a powerful personal blogging platform. It contains a set of features in order to simplify the process of creating online publications as much as possible, to make it pleasant and convenient. Personal blogging platform with practical settings and default properties and an extremely flexible and customizable kernel.

A great feature is the presence of a centralized WordPressCodex database.
Opportunities
Download

Galleries

Coppermine

The gallery is focused on multi-user, multi-album: user roles, user albums, limits, moderation, and so on. There are many translations, skins (tabular and handicraft), plug-ins. Integration with Joomla and probably some other systems.

This CMS can be chosen if the gallery is the main part of the site, especially since there is a plugin that implements the simplest cms, so as not to install any other engine for several pages.
Description
Download

Gallery (Gallery2, updated to version 3)

A very voluminous project with various functions. The gallery uses an interface in which all operations are implemented via the web, which makes it easy to download, manage and display images.

Among the main functions are the following:

• Convenient and clear gallery navigation system
• Flexible photo permissions / albums
• Multi-user mode with registration and quotas
• Configurable themes and display settings
• Expandable modular structure
• Various image upload options
• Integration with many CMS and customization
• The gallery is available in more than 30 languages, including Russian.

Description
Download

Koken

Pros:

• Almost all the necessary actions are made with the mouse, for example, you can drag and drop photos to another album.
• For special cases, it is possible to put custom html css javascript on the page.
• Plugins are installed in one click.

Minuses

• CMS is young and very few plugins.
• The design is somewhat limited by the specific framework of the available templates.

Description
Download

MG2 = MiniGal 2

Simple, with basic capabilities system without a database .

Specifications:

• Easy to use
• Work speed
• Standardization, support for changing skins.
• Displays EXIF ​​image information.
• Support for titles, image descriptions and user comments
• Multilanguage support
• Works in php safe mode
• Unicode support
• Full-featured web admin interface
• Multi Stream Image Upload and FTP Upload
• Automatic thumbnail creation
• Image rotation
• Short gallery addresses

Description
Download

Picateka

Easy, fast, simple and convenient system. Almost everything you need, almost nothing extra. Instead of albums - tags. Multiuse is, but basic. The main disadvantage is that tag links use all the same tags, so for the Russian language, the links are unreadable.

Disadvantages: CMS was abandoned at the end of 2006. There are no plugins, they are not supported in principle. The official site has long been unavailable.
Download

Simpleviewer

SimpleViewer is a free, customizable image gallery. SimpleViewer now supports UniversalPlayback technology, which means correct display on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android.

The paid version of SimpleViewer-Pro supports advanced settings, no ads, an unlimited number of images, and more.

Features of the free version:

• Use on any site.
• Universal Playback. Correctly displayed on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android.
• Intuitive image navigation
• Resizing interface and fullscreen mode.
• Automatic language support.
• Opening an image in a new window by right-clicking.
• Download images from the local machine or from Flickr.
• Maximum photos per gallery 50

Description
Download

Zenphoto

Zenphoto is an independent CMS for multimedia websites.

Zenphoto has support for image, video and audio formats, the Zenpage CMS plugin provides a fully integrated news feed (blog) and custom pages for the entire website. This makes Zenphoto an ideal CMS for personal sites of illustrators, artists, designers, photographers, directors and musicians.

Features:

• Upload files and folders through the admin panel or directly via FTP
• Automatically generated image size
• EXIF / IPTC metadata support
• Sort, move, copy, rename albums and images
• Supported formats: JPG, GIF, PNG, MP3, MP4, M4V, M4A, FLA, FLV, MOV, 3GP
• Slideshow, comments, RSS, tags
• Custom management pages
• News section (blog) with nested categories
• File manager for files
• Group of users
• Change and assignment of rights
• Password protection for albums and pages
• Extensive customization theme themes
• Themes and Templates

Description
Download

Social networks

Elgg

Elgg is a social networking engine that includes “building blocks” that allow you to create your own full-featured social networks and applications.

• Profile. Elgg comes with a set of profile fields that can be added or modified by the site administrator. Using a powerful system of widgets, or elements, users can choose from the gallery available widgets to create a complete, diverse and individual profile. The Elgg profile acts as a broad field for reviewing the site and external sources, providing the user with information about himself, as well as a convenient means of communication.
• Activity. The activity accounting system, which allows you to easily and quickly track activities throughout the site, and the activities of both your friends and your own. The activity pane can be the first page for logged in users, or you can give users the opportunity to create the first page themselves using widgets (or elements). On this page, users will be able to see new members of the social network, as well as write messages in the microblogging.
• Private messages
• Notifications
• Wall
• Microblogging (a la twitter). Microblogging allows you to turn your site into a personal Twitter. Users can write messages to microblogging through the site or via SMS. You can send messages from your microblog to Twitter, and vice versa - Elgg supports tight integration with the Twitter service.
• Groups Users can create groups around a topic of interest and participate in a group discussion, share files and explore group pages.
• Blogs. Tools for bloggers have the following useful features: Autosave, Categories, Mail Switch, Preview, Ability to embed images, music, video and other media.
• Social bookmarks.
• Photo gallery
• Video Gallery
• Documents, pages (with the possibility of collaboration). The Pages plugin allows you to store hierarchically organized pages with text, as well as to establish who can read and write them.
• External pages are a simple way for site administrators to fill in the obligatory “About site”, “Rules” and “Privacy” pages.
• Insert media.
• Files Elgg is equipped with a full-fledged file storage, which supports a wide range of file formats, including photos, Word documents, audio recordings, video, PDF and others.
• Information Bar
• Categories
• Access
• FAQ, various question-answer modules, voting
• Tinymce
• Openid

Official site

Explay CMS

ExplayCMS is a social network management system. The standard assembly already includes all the features that a social network should have: users, blogs, photo gallery, internal mail, friends feed, comments, polls and ratings.

Explay CMS is very friendly to developers. There is detailed documentation, and the development of new features requires minimal money and developer time. A special opportunity to develop a site on Explay CMS is the ability to create any additional content properties, for example, for publications or photos.

Key features:

• Users:
  - Registration with confirmation e-mail
  - Profile Settings
  - Ability to download multiple avatars
  - E-mail alert settings
  - Password change
  - Ability to add friends
  - Evaluation (rating) of users
  - Group of users
  - User rating
  - Statistics
  - Search by user

• Blogs:
  - Publications of two types: article and link
  - Built-in typographer (Jevix)
  - Ability to create blogs
  - Evaluation of publications and blogs. Blog Rating
  - Appointment of administrators and moderators of blogs
  - Ability to comment
  - Alerts for new comments on e-mail
  - RSS
• Photo Gallery:
  - Personal photo albums
  - Upload multiple photos at once
  - Photo Evaluation
  - Commenting photos
  - Notification of new comments
  - RSS
• Internal mail - messaging between users and notification to e-mail
• Tape (news of friends) - "log" of the actions of friends
• Banners
• Static pages

The official site is no longer available.
Download

InstantCMS

InstantCMS is a free, feature rich community management system. It is written in PHP and uses MySQL as a database. First of all, the system is focused on creating social networks, dating sites, online clubs and city portals.

The engine out of the box offers: a portal, personal and collective blogs, personal and collective photo albums, friends, clubs, ratings, guest profiles and file uploads in the same place, catalogs, FAQ, bulletin boards, shop (modest bundled and more serious as a separate paid ), . The design is changed by templates, the functions are added by various functional modules.

Specifications:

• Personal and team blogs
• Clubs - Interest Groups
• User Profiles and Posts
• Personal and Shared Photo Albums
• Articles and universal catalog
• Forums and Comments
• Board for any announcements
• Banner rotation system
• Automatic installation on the server
• Clear control panel
• The possibility of expanding plugins
• Simple template system

Description
Download

Livestreet

LiveStreet is used to create blogs and social networks. Almost complete analog of habrakhabra. There are personal and collective blogs, ratings, topics, polls, topics, links, invites.

Opportunities:

• Personal blogging
• The ability to create collective blogs
• Rating system of blogs, topics, comments, users
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• Ajax'
• Sphinx
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Description
Download
Demo

BigStreet

Analogue LiveStreet, currently exists in the alpha version, and has several interesting features that its competitor does not have, for example, LiveStreet's personal blogs on subdomains are implemented by a paid hack, and for BigStreet by a standard function.

Opportunities:

• Personal blogs.
• Team blogs.
• Invitations (invites) with the ability to make the site closed.
• Shared feeds with customizable rating delimitations.
• Comments
• Ratings of posts, comments.
• Search by tags.
• Search by post
• Module Important Announcements
• Search users by nick.
• Disable email notifications about new comments and private messages.
• Feed to RSS.
• Import from RSS
• The module of internal correspondence with the ability to connect to the correspondence of several users and sort the correspondence by "folders".
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Download

Forums

IPB (Invision Power Board)

Commercial closed engine, but the English-speaking community involved in its support and modification, quite popular and has thousands of people around the world. Most of the modifications and styles developed by these communities are free and free to download.

Official additions are also mostly paid: IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, IP.Downloads, IP.Content. There are also free for customers: IP.Tracker (bugtracker), IP.Shoutbox (chat), etc.

As for the Russian-speaking community, it is extremely small and very fragmented. For this reason, the number of Russian-language modifications is extremely small, and most of them are translation of existing English-language hooks.
Official site
Community

Phorum

Phorum is a free, open source web forum.

The module subsystem provides a flexible way to expand and customize to the needs of specific sites, many of the features are implemented as plug-ins. HTML templates are supported.

For version 5.2 there are translations into many languages, including Russian and Ukrainian.
Official site
Download
Localization
Demo

phpBB

phpBB is a popular free source code web forum developed in PHP that supports various DBMS, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, MS Access, SQLite, and Oracle (if necessary).

In addition to supporting various DBMS, the advantages of phpBB are:

• Easy to use template system.
• Multilingual interface: language files are translated into more than 50 languages ​​and are available for free download from the official site phpBB.
• Large user community.
• A large number of available and updated modifications.

In addition to the basic functions of the forum, phpBB 3 implements the possibility of creating sub-forums, attaching files to messages, managing search bots and server load, full access rights management, and an update wizard.

phpBB 3 includes a caching system, bookmarks, warnings, custom BBCode, and a host of other features.
Official site
Comparison of phpBB2 and phpBB3
Download the russified version
Demo

phpBBex

phpBBex (phpBBextended) is a new, increasingly popular fork of phpBB 3, in which the most popular features are already embedded. Most innovations are unique and do not exist in the form of mods. The code has been fixed bugs, the code is optimized and adapted to the latest versions of phpBB. At the same time, new features are not imposed at all - this is facilitated by a large number of new options in the admin panel, where everything superfluous can be simply turned off.

It is important to note that phpBBex is a fork of phpBB with its independent development cycle. This means that phpBBex is not an assembly, but a new flexible forum engine without turning it into a combine for all occasions.

Features:

• PhpBBex uses modified prosilver in a new color scheme.
• The maximum and minimum page widths are configured from the admin panel.
• , , phpBB 3
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• «», ( phpBB 3 )
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• and much more

Description
Download

PunBB

The goals of the developers of this engine are ease, compactness and simplicity of the user interface compared to other forums, while PunBB implements less functionality than similar software.

Since version 1.3, the plugin engine has appeared in the engine, which allows to extend the functionality of the engine without touching its code. Support was also added for domain names containing non-Latin characters, support for MySQLInnoDB and SQLite3 was added.
Official site
Download + Russifier

Simple Machines Forum (SMF)

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is a free online forum written in PHP using MySQL database.

MF is available in 43 languages, including Russian, Albanian, English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Chinese, German, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian , Finnish, French and Swedish. It can be translated into missing languages ​​by volunteers.

The SMF has a basic repository for free storage and tracking of modifications through the Simple Machines website. Many modifications, also known as “mods,” are created and distributed free of charge, including video games, profile supplements, approval of messages by the moderator, the horoscope, and many others in development.

The package manager included in SMF is one of its main strengths. It allows the administrator to install modifications and updates for SMF without having to change the source code of the scripts, usually with just a few mouse clicks.

• Uses PHP and MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite.
• The developed template system makes it easier for user editing.
• Advanced permissions and user management.
• Support multiple languages ​​at once.
• Open and well documented source code.
• Track new and old unread topics.
• Designed for optimal performance and scalability.
• The best SEO (Search Engine Optimization for search engines.
• Log scan by search engines.
• Multimedia output. (XHTML, XML, RSS, WAP)
• A package manager that automatically installs or removes mods (also known as hacks.)
• Ability to install mods for custom themes.
• Caching on files to increase performance, regardless of whether the accelerator is installed.

Official site
Download

Vanilla

Easy, simple and free forum engine in Russian, supporting plugins and themes.

• Due to the modularity and more than 450 plug-ins, you can create forums of very different functionality and orientation.
• The ease of the forum itself and the ease of learning are stated, initially a web-based ideology, its own framework for writing extensions, the ability to embed the forum in a variety of engines.

Download
Download Russified assembly

vBulletin

vBulletin (abbreviated as vB) is a commercial forum engine.

For vBulletin there are a huge number of modifications, a lot of paid and free hacks.

Quite a large number of skins.

• Lots of SEO components.
• Simple and nice admin panel.
• Multilingualism
• The search uses fulltext.
• Full Russian translation engine (admin / user part) for all versions.

Official site

Online stores

ECShop

Chinese engine for online store.

• the store has the ability to create auctions
• there is an affiliate program
• You can create an unlimited number of categories and subcategories of goods
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• it is possible to indicate the "market" price of the product and the price of the store; when buying, the store itself will calculate how much the buyer wins by buying in your store

Official site in Chinese
Russian translation and optimization

Magento

Magento is an online shopping management system. According to Alexa, Magento is the most popular online shopping management system in the world for February 2011. In June 2011 MagentoInc. was acquired by eBayInc. Unlike osCommerce, Magento is a rather young engine. The engine is built on ZendFramework, which immediately determines its volume: It is large and heavy, but also powerful enough.

Key Features:

• From a single administrative part, you can manage a trading network of online stores in different domains, languages, with different product range
• Flexible customization of the appearance ("themes" and "templates") of the showcase
• Display of prices on the shop window in different currencies (including at the buyer's choice)
• Multilingualism
• Payment and delivery methods

The appearance of the storefront in Magento is determined by the themes. The topic is:

• a set of templates for displaying visible blocks
• a set of rules that determine which blocks in which place of a particular page to display, and combined into files, which are called logical markup files (layouts)
• a set of resource files (skins): CSS, images, scripts in JavaScript

Unlike most other site management systems (for example, Joomla), in Magento, themes can be linked to each other by the inheritance relation: if the current theme does not have a specific template, mapping rule or resource file, the system takes them from the basic theme. For example, all 3 standard themes for Magento: Default, Modern and iPhone are inherited from a single basic theme. However, a third-party programmer can create his own basic theme.

Unlike Joomla, where right in the administrative part you can assign the display location and parameters of a specific module on the page, Magento mainly aims to edit the on-screen showcase blocks not through the administrative part, but through logical markup files and template files.

Magento considers the following system types of goods:

• Simple Product (SimpleProduct)
• Customized product (ConfigurableProduct)
• Simple custom product (Simple Product with Custom Options)
• Prefab (BundleProduct)
• Group of simple products (GroupedProduct)
• Digital Product (VirtualProduct)

Description
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Demo version

Opencart

OpenCart is an online store engine, around which a large community has been formed (more than 46,000 participants), thanks to which there are more than 8,500 free and commercial add-ons that allow you to modify and supplement the functions of the store in a variety of ways.

Benefits for the programmer:

• The code corresponds to the basic principles of the Model-View-Controller pattern, while the structure is very simple, being an excellent framework for creating an online store of any complexity
• In comparison with competitors (Magento, VirtueMart, Prestashop) it has a higher speed and lower requirements for server resources.
• Compatible with all major browsers.
• Built-in multi-language, English is set by default. Russian, Ukrainian and many others are available.
• Unlimited number of sections and products.
• Support for templates, modules and add-ons
• Support for "vQmod" (akaVirtualQuickMod), which greatly simplifies the development of extensions and their transfer when updating the version of OpenCart.

Features:
Administration / Base

• Supports unlimited number of products and category sections
• Support for physical and virtual (downloadable) products
• Easy backup and restore
• Product and customer statistics
• Multilingual support
• Multi-currency support

Client part

• Registration of buyers.
• All orders are stored in a database for fast and efficient search (purchase history for buyers)
• Customers can view the history and status of their orders.
• Temporary basket for guests and permanent for customers
• Quick and friendly search interface
• SSL security
• Easy site navigation
• A customer may have multiple shipping addresses in his address book.

Payment and delivery system

• Support multiple payment types (checks, payment orders)
• Support for multiple payment systems (modules) (2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.Net, iPayment, RuPay, Webmoney).
• Setting payment methods for different areas
• The calculation of delivery based on the weight and price of goods, delivery area. Many modules for calculating delivery.
• Calculation of taxes.

The disadvantages of the engine for the most part are a payment for the speed of the scripts and the simplicity of their refinement:

• The work with SEO is not fully debugged (the ability to look at the same pages at different URLs and the lack of support for the 404th page) (most problems are solved with the help of additional extensions)
• A product cannot have fields for individual properties and, as a result, it cannot implement in principle filters by properties. (since version 1.5, attributes and comparison by them have appeared. Filter by attributes is available in the form of a paid add-on LayeredNavigation 1.5)

Official site
Download

OsCommerce family

The osCommerce store provides a rich set of out-of-the-box tools, cart functionality, and over 5900 add-ons that are available for free.

Unfortunately, osCommerce does not have a template system for customizing the design, but there are a number of modules that solve this problem. For example STS and BTS. Many osCommerce clones have a templating system

Features:

• Supports unlimited number of products and category sections
• Support for physical and virtual (downloadable) products
• Product and customer statistics
• Multilingual support
• Multi-currency support
• Registration of buyers.
• All orders are stored in a database (purchase history for buyers)
• Customers can view the history and status of their orders.
• Temporary basket for guests and permanent for customers
• Quick and friendly search interface
• A customer may have multiple shipping addresses in his address book.
• Support multiple payment types (checks, payment orders)
• Support for multiple payment systems (2CheckOut, PayPal, Authorize.Net, iPayment, RuPay, Webmoney).
• Setting payment methods for different areas
• The calculation of delivery based on the weight and price of goods, delivery area. Many modules for calculating delivery.
• Calculation of taxes.

Description
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Prestashop

PrestaShop is an open source e-commerce web application. French development, translated by the community into many languages.

A huge number of modules and plugins are supported, out of the box statistics on almost any action in the store works.

Some of the features are:

• The ability to use watermarks in the photo
• Customer reviews and product ratings
• Price display with or without tax
• Display the number of goods in stock
• Sort goods by different parameters (relevance, price)
• Discount display in percent
• Display of manufacturers and brands
• Option "send to friend"
• Payment by bank transfer, check, cash on delivery, GoogleCheckout, PayPal, Moneybookers, HiPay, QIWI, WebMoney, YandexMoney, Robokassa
• Statistics
• When installing, 8 languages ​​are available for selection: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Russian
• Automatic recalculation of all prices in any currency
• Synchronization of currencies with the current rate
• Tax recalculation at the buyer's country (region) rates

Description
Download
Demo

Business cards without a SQL database

If you need to create a small website, for example, a business card site on several pages, then there is no need to use heavy CMS with a lot of unnecessary functions. For these purposes, you can use the engines without a database - many of them have a visual editor and admin panel. Using CMS without SQL, you can develop blogs, business cards, and even portals.

GetSimple

GetSimple is a lightweight CMS running on XML files. So that it is easy to use, it includes only the functions required by most business cards and nothing extra. It works without a database, stores everything in XML, there are normal gallery plugins, news, feedback, a guest book. Writing your plugins is very simple.

• Based on XML. Does not use MySQL to store information, but instead creates simple XML files for each page. This helps to avoid cumbersome and loads of sites working with databases.
• Ability to cancel for almost any action. To eliminate the possibility of errors during installation and working with content, GetSimple includes the ability to cancel any action.
• Simple admin panel. The main emphasis in creating the site was placed on a simple and intuitive control panel interface. As a result of numerous observations on different CMS, a convenient and clear control panel was developed.
• Easy installation. Full time installation of CMS takes no more than 5 minutes. This includes uploading files to the hosting, installation and all system configuration.
• Easy to create templates (themes). The template is very easy to create. The template prescribed tags that are responsible for calling certain functions. Not a lot of tags, but they are enough to create a decent full-fledged business card site. It is easy to create a separate template for a specific type of page - for example, for a contact page.
• Getsimple created specifically for business cards sites. The cost of such a site is minimal - when choosing a hosting service, you can choose an inexpensive rate without a database. A working site takes only 2.5 MB.

Description
Download

Monstra

The Monstra engine has a well thought out and simple admin panel, very convenient template creation is provided. The system provides api for plugins and themes - at the moment more than 30 plugins have been developed.

CMS Multiuser - You can create multiple administrators, editors and users for your site.

SEO optimization is provided - you can set separate keywords, descriptions, meta tags for each page.

Plugins and features:

• Patterns and Themes
• Gallery (several for every taste and color)
• News, articles, blog
• Feedback form
• Various text editors
• Menu management
• Backup
• Guest book
• Multiplayer
• Yandex maps
• Rating and comments to articles, news, pages
• And much more

Description
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Github

Nanote

Nanote is a compact micro-blog engine written in php. It does not use relational databases and works on files. Built without the use of frameworks and does not require server-side modules.

Opportunities:

• chronological records
• static pages
• CNC (CURL)
• rss
• comments
• captcha (recapcha)
• email comment notifications
• gravatar's
• announcements (auto-roll-up, manual tackle <!-cut-->)
• Search
• stop words (antispam) / ip ban list
• previous / next entry
• last activity on posts
• quick change of design
• new version notification

Official site
Download

Stacey

Stacey is a lightweight content management system that does not have a database or setup file setup. Content is managed by creating folders and editing text files. Neither the admin panel nor the user authorization form is provided. However, the system includes a simple template language.

The system can handle dynamic elements, such as creating breadcrumbs, navigation lists and attaching images.
Description
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CMS Maker

Russian crafts, which does not use for the pages of the database - MySQL.

CMS Maker is suitable for a website-business card, for sites of any subject that do not require bulky CMS.

Opportunities:

• Works on any hosting with PHP support
• PHP4 support - PHP5
• The admin folder address can be renamed to any other for security reasons.
• Multi-level, endless menu
• Static pages of the form: * / №-alias-sntanici.html
• Templates
• Built-in image and file manager. You can upload images in batch up to 20 pieces. Generate a preview.
• To increase the pictures used library highslide
• Easy site transfer to a new hosting by simple copying
• Fully open code

Default Password and Login to enter Admin Panel: demo demo . You can change it in the file: admin / passw.php
Official site
Download

Most likely the article will be supplemented if other interesting solutions are found.

Sources:
habrahabr.ru
cmsbezmysql.ru

UPD. Fixed inaccuracies in the descriptions

UPD 2. Thanks to the comments on this article, 10+ more CMS will be added to the review:
Alto CMS, Koken, Simple Machine Forum, LocomotiveCMS, Host CMS, xenForo, Monstra, Social Engine, phpFox, MyBB ...

UPD3. Added a few more CMS, which indicated in the comments