Content Management Systems are invaluable for many businesses. By using a CMS, companies won’t need to code for building the system from scratch. The demand for catered to the rapid growth of the open source CMS development sector in the Middle East. While many organizations don’t rely on CMS instead coding their own site, many others can’t neglect the benefits of a CMS. The presence of open source makes developing a CMS cost-effective and budget-friendly for organizations. 

This article presents 4 PHP-compatible Content Management Systems that came out on top in 2018, and will likely be adopted more next year. 

WordPress

WordPress still retains its position as the most popular CMS in the world, preferred by hundreds of thousands of developers to build unique, appealing websites. What makes WordPress so great is the fact that it’s open source. But the catch is that it has a steep learning curve. A novice developer may not be able to master it completely and leverage its full potential. 

The platform is also compatible with a number of popular third-party plugins provided the chosen WordPress plan has enough slots to accommodate those plug-ins. Many companies in the Middle East offering open source development services recommend using WordPress CMS.

Joomla

An advanced open source CMS that could appear sophisticated to amateur developers, Joomla is actually widely used to create intuitive and responsive websites. One of its major benefits is that Joomla allows developers to use a variety of business add-ons, and most of these add-ons are completely free of cost. 

The major demerits include limited customizability and incompatibility with certain paid plugins.

Modx

Modx has been around for a long while and is considered be one of the most business-friendly systems available in the market today. Its major benefits include commendable flexibility, highly customizable management feature, multi-language support, multi-site/multi-server support, SEO, and impressive security. For a small yet growing software development company in Dubai, Modx may not be the right choice for a CMS despite its business-friendliness. 

Concrete5

Licensed under the MIT software license, Concrete5 surprisingly ended up as a personal favorite for many new developers. Despite being a free software, it packs a number of great features including SEO, intuitive editing capabilities, multi-device optimization etc. As it’s only started gaining momentum, the community behind it is rather small. This is seen as a demerit of Concrete5 along with the fact that its more advanced features will be locked and unavailable in the free version.