I have spent this afternoon reading a CMS (content management system) book entitled, “SilverStripe: The Complete Guide to CMS Development.” SilverStripe, a PHP-based CMS and yet an open source software with its architecture broken into three types of components: models, views, and controllers (MVC) is more than just a CMS, it is a framework that can helps a Web developer to build a wide range of Web applications.

Unlike any popular, and award-winning CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, etc., to install and use it, your Web server must support PHP5. In fact, playing it on my Localhost and reading the book, SilverStripe is “not” an ideal tool for a newbie for developing a content-driven Web site. Although SilverStripe equipped with a powerful blend of features, such as easy to set up, but it does not comes with a robust user-interface, and thus you have to write the script and coding it in order to make it all work. Also, SilverStripe is not easy to modify, not to mention the need to run a single test or to run all tests in the project path.

However, SilverStripe is totally customizable CMS. Since it is largely written in Sapphire, a PHP5 Web framework originally developed to support SilverStripe, and hence it is extremely flexible to extend SilverStripe CMS-powered site to some other Web application such as a full-fledged job board.

Perhaps, you might ask, “So many PHP-based CMS, do we need a new PHP-based CMS?” To be honest, I see the potential of this CMS that based on this kind of MVC Sapphire framework. With SilverStripe, a Web developer can have a bit of freedom to experiment with alternative way to build a content site and not so narrowly focus on building specific document management portal as a whole.

CMS, or content management system is the most popular and yet easiest way to make a content Web site up and running, all we need to do is to upload and configure the source files to the hosting server. However, selecting the right CMS for the use of content driven site and make the real comparison between different CMS available on the Web, it is not easy. Thus, it’s not surprise that there are bunch of articles entitled from “Joomla vs Drupal?” “Joomla vs Drupal vs PHPnuke?” till “CMS made simple vs Drupal?” with the purpose of advising people in choosing the right CMS.

Still, there is a new entrant entering into this CMS space that called GetSimple. As the name suggests, GetSimple could be one of the simple CMS based on the fact that it is an XML based and in other words, it doesn’t need a database in order to run it. It is lightweight, open source, with the source files written in PHP and will help you build a small Web site in less than an hour.

Currently, GetSimple installation files come with two (2) themes, the Default_Simple theme and Cardinal theme. It is also equipped with some basic features such as “undo” as well as backup. Although it is not an ideal tool for developing large dynamic community Web sites, but for those who are in need of developing a small Web site, GetSimple offers an alternative to the popular CMS such as Drupal or Joomla.

Joomla, is one of the popular open source content management systems among the users nowadays. There are many sites being built with this Joomla. Some used Joomla to build their small business sites, some used it for corporate site purposes, bundled with a lot of third-party extensions such as poll, blog, shopping cart, i.e. VirtueMart, CRM, and etc.

Most recently, there is a new tool namely JomSocial dedicated to everything Joomla for the Joomla users in their efforts to build a Joomla social network/community. JomSocial was developed by Azrul, subtly coined himself as the Joomla expert and released it to the Joomla community as a paid extension which charge $149 for the Professional version. For users to install and use it in their Joomla sites, their Joomla must be version 1.5.7 and above. In terms of functionality, there’s a ton of features if you’re using this JomSocial, you’ll get a custom user profile, private messaging system, friend-buddy system, activity stream, etc. To get a grasp on it, you can visit this JomSocial development site.

For years, Joomla users when they developed their community sites with Joomla, they can use the free modules available such as Community Builder, GroupJive, and Fireboard. Although these three (3) extensions can easily help to create a best Joomla social networking possible, but integrate these three is always a pain and one might wondered how much custom work is under the hood.

Does Joomla social networking have a steep learning curve? Yes, but it seems the goal of JomSocial is to be a killer extension to have in Joomla with an aim to help users to build their social networks with much less time and work.

Zimplit is a newly launched extremely lightweight CMS (content management system) that designed for Web site owners to build the CMS-based small Web sites. If you’re in the middle of developing a content driven site that is up and running fast, Zimplit is an ideal tool that makes your Web site creation easy.

Since Zimplit is aimed to be an extremely lightweight, small and versatile CMS. It is designed for the non-technical people, and not the technically skilled users that familiar with customizing the bespoke or off the shelf CMS projects. With Zimplit, any user with the basic knowledge of Microsoft Office or Open Office can do the customization and manage hierarchical Web site she need without any bloat. If you wanted badly a small CMS, Zimplit would suffice.

To install this Zimplit, you’ll just need to upload and install it to your Web server provided your Web server supports PHP 4.3 and above. The software source file is small, consists of only one core engine file, i.e. zimplit.php that weigh in at 32KB. After you installing Zimplit, you will notice that there will be no admin panel, not like any other CMS framework that bundled with a beautiful admin interface in which you are allowed to define the data model. As a result, you don’t need a back-end database when you are using Zimplit. What you do is you just log in and edit on-site with the toolbar that offers some basic inline content editing features. Since Zimplit is offered without any charge, the Zimplit Legal Notices or “Zimple power” must be remained in the footer of your site, and if you wish to remove the Zimplit credit link from the footer, you simply can pay the credit removal fees for $49 per domain name.

Zimplit is an open source CMS released under AGPL3 license, and the startup behind this CMS is based in Estonia. In short, this CMS is focused on user-friendliness, and not on scalability.

Intel’s cool software platform, like any other Digg clone, the article submitted by registered user with the most votes will always be appeared on the main page. In evaluate how its offering can bring value to the software lovers, it does its founding mission. However, when I pay close attention to the community participation on the site, it still did not generate the same kind of buzz as generated by Digg, not to mention how this site will help Intel to find out “the next Google.” Perhaps all those so-called “the next Google” are still the small and lean ventures, and definitely not that easy be found by the ordinary Internet users, only private investors and venture capitalists will know how to access them in the first place.

This site is said was powered by Pligg, a famous open source content management system. When it is developed using an open source tool, I still curious how it cost around $40,000 to develop.

Update: This site has been closed down.