Best CMS Written in PHP

Recommendations: 22 | Last Updated: March 2, 2022 (2Β years, 1Β month)

WordPress WordPress

WordPress powers roughly 30% of all web pages online. It's a free and open source CMS designed and developed for self-hosted publishing by Automattic, Inc. The software is written in PHP and utilize either MySQL or MariaDB as a database, and is compatible with most web hosts. Wordpress includes a plugin architecture and a templating system that can be used to extend and customize your website. These are commonly known as WordPress plugins and WordPress themes and make up a whole open source and commercial eco-system where anyone is free to create products for the platform. 

With WordPress it is super simple to get started. Most hosting platforms and virtual private server provider includes 1-click installs that allow you to be up and running in minutes. On top of that, WordPress itself provides easy customization for the less tech-savvy person. While also featuring a large library of plugins and themes (both free and premium).
For developer and designers, WordPress is a nightmare. There are so many hoops to go through to actually build something of your own. Gradually over the years WordPress has become more of a website builder that is easily customizable by the end user, rather than a platform that gives developers and designers the freedom to create.
We are enjoying WP not only because of plenty of themes but also for the n number of plugins. We are happy to have this content management system.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

Directus Directus

An open-source tool for managing content across all your omni-channel digital experiences. Directus is free and open-source headless CMS written in PHP, that takes a data first approach. Developers and content creators use Directus to manage content and generate a powerful API that can be used by any frontend technology. Directus can be self-hosted and is absolutely free.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

ExpressionEngine ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich content management platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations around the world to easily manage their web site. ExpressionEngine has a large community of developers that make add-ons that extend the system capability. With ExpressionEngine add-ons, no matter the task, you'll have a solution.

At the surface, ExpressionEngine looks just like any other CMS. However that could not be further from the truth, ExpressionEngine provides features that make it more into a web framework than a CMS. Allowing you to create web applications that handle authentication, user management and much more. The Add-ons infrastructure also allow you to download and install pre-built extensions or create your own to further improve the experience of your site. ExpressionEngine also give more freedom to designers and developers and let them use workflows that they are used to.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

October CMS October CMS

October is a free, open-source and self-hosted content management system written in PHP on top of the framework Laravel. The CMS features a universal extendable dashboard, inspector, reusable CMS components and a plugin system that can be used to extend functinality of your website. The plugin store contains thousands of community-made plugins that can either be purchased or installed for free. As a data store, October CMS supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

ProcessWire ProcessWire

With ProcessWire you can connect all your content seamlessly and making content management fast, easy and fun. ProcessWire is a free and open-source content management system and framework released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. The CMS is built around an API wit similar naming connventions to that of jQuery, which makes it easier to use for JavaScript developers. It also provides a secure foundation, proven scalability and the performance needed to manage content online sucessfully.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

Statamic Statamic

Statamic is a flat file based content management system written in PHP. With Statamic you can build better and faster websites that are easy to manage. Statamic features over 40 field types, drag & drop navigation builder, revision and content history, inline content editing, asset management, plugin architecture and real-time collaboration that makes content management a breeze.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

Drupal Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source CMS written in PHP. Drupal is used for creating website for businesses, political parties and governments. The CMS currently powers 2% of all websites on the internet.

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Craft CMS Craft CMS

Craft CMS is a flexible, user-friendly CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web and beyond. Craft is designed from the ground up to empoer the entire creative process. From the user-friendly interface to the completely customizable back end, everything you interact with is designed to just make sense. With Craft your content comes first. No more trying to make your content work within the confines of the CMS.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

Grav Grav

Grav is a modern free and open source flat-file content management system. With Grav, you can publish content and build sites in a fast, flexible and simple manner with the file-based web platform. Grav requires zero installation and is just an zip archive that can be extracted to start using the CMS. Grave also comes with a powerful package management system that allow you to extend the feature set of Grav CMS. With the package management system you can install and upgrade themes and plugins written specifically for Grav. The software is written in PHP and released fully free and open-source under the MIT License.

Caching is an integral feature of Grav that has been baked in from the start. The caching mechanism that Grav employs is the primary reason Grav is as fast as it is. This is achieved with the Doctrine Cache library which support various caching backends including APCu, Memcache, Redis and WinCache.
With Grav's multisite setup you can create and manage a network of multiple websites, all running on a single installation of Grav.

πŸ‘ Most people think this is a good recommendation.

Flextype Flextype

Flextype is super fast headless content management system with an elegant architecture and built-in smart cache.

While most things in Flextype are designed to be simplistic and intuitive. It falls short when it comes to image and file management within the admin panel itself. I find working with images tedious, as there is no way to upload multiple images, or manipulate images from the admin panel.
With Flextype you can define unlimited content types with unique behavior and custom fields. If you have used WordPress before, you a probably familiar with custom post types which are used to extend WordPress beyond a regular blog. In Flextype these are called entries and can be used to create any content type that is both easy to manage from an administration perspective as well as providing developers with the flexibility to build dynamic applications.
Flextype provides REST API out-of-the-box, with compact JSON payloads that gives you full programmatic control over your content management system. Allowing you to develop applications for mobile devices as well as the web.