Composite is a free and open source content management system based on the Microsoft .NET 4 platform.

It has all the standard features that can be expected from a CMS and has much more like a SEO assistant or built-in image editor.

The application can be controlled by users from every level as it is possible to set a different "publication workflow" for different user roles.

The CMS is pretty careful on creating W3C-compliant web-pages as there is a XHTML validation-when-editing feature included.

For a faster usage, it is possible to edit pages while browsing them.

As a last handy feature, Composite supports creating multilanguage websites and helps you focus on the content rather than the layout during that process.

The Secretary is an open source CMS (PHP/MySQL) that is specially built for creative people who are in need of displaying their portfolios.

You can create projects, add items to each project (can be images, videos or sounds) and even group these items to present them in a custom way/look.

It is also possible to categorize them with sections and use tags for every item to reaching them faster.

The application has a simple and powerful backend that mostly works with drag'n drops and enables users to create any number of web pages besides creating a portfolio.

Last week, a post at WRD was announcing the giveaway of 3 Unlimited Premium Accounts from Wix, the popular Flash website builder service.

The winners are selected and can be found at the bottom of this post. But before that, let's remember:

What is Wix?

Wix is a free Flash website builder service that makes it possible to create websites for users at every level of web design knowledge.

Every website created is search engine-friendly and integrates well with Google Analytics.

It also lets users to create image galleries, display videos or stream music.

And, this free website builder has an e-commerce store creator for selling stuff easily.

The winners of the giveaway

Winners are selected with the query mentioned at the announcement post and here they are:

• Dylan (comment #198129)
• Ivan I. (comment #197829)
• Alex (comment #200783)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for joining the giveaway.

Wix, the popular Flash CMS application, is giving away 3 Annual Unlimited Premium Accounts ($99 value/account) to WebResourcesDepot readers.

The details on joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post. But before that:

What is Wix?

Wix is a free website builder tool that makes creating nice Flash websites so easy for anyone whether you have or don't have experience in web design.

The websites created are search engine friendly and adding image galleries, videos or streaming music is a breeze.

It integrates tightly with Google Analytics and helps tracking every detail of the websites.

Wix lets you customize every page totally and there are lots of templates offered if you prefer to start with something already good-looking. Here are some screenshots of the websites build with it:

And, there are much more live examples provided in the Wix Directory.

The free website builder also offers an e-commerce store creator to start selling stuff instantly.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to win one of the Unlimited Premium accounts which has attractive features like:

• using your own domain
• 1gb storage
• $75 Google AdWords voucher + $50 Facebook voucher + free domain coupon

it is enough to comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 8th of September 2010 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1825 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

Vivvo is a professional and "commercial open source" CMS application that is built with PHP, uses MySQL for storing data and offers a "top-notch" experience.

The application is ready to power any type and size of website from a portal to a newspaper, a blog, etc. as it is already preferred by 1000s of websites.

The CMS comes as a downloadable package to install on your own servers (has a web-based installer) with powerful features for managing the content like publishing articles, static pages, blogs, images, photo galleries, videos, podcasts and keeping revisions of them.

It has the tools to equip any website with functional modules like an event calendar, commenting system, integrated search, ability to show related articles and integrate with popular forum softwares.

Also, the application helps the content to spread with social bookmarking syndication, "email to a friend", print version, subscribe, RSS and more.

Vivvo has an impressive and slick admin interface which has a permission-based user management system where it is possible to define editors, writers, photo gallery managers, members, etc.

It is SEO-friendly in means of the URLs created, ability to customize meta tags/keywords and auto-sitemap generation. And, the 20 free templates that the CMS comes with are all SEO optimized.

Besides these features, it is always to think of something missing. But Vivvo is ready to cover it with 100+ free plugins and widgets (like multi-site manager, Twitter updater) where it is possible to create new ones as the application is open source.

Vivvo is very well documented with user guides, a knowledge base and a highly active community behind it.

For web designers who frequently build new websites for clients, managing the content can be a headache:

• no CMS is used and you may need to edit the content manually
• the CMS can be complicated for the client
• or, maybe the worst, the CMS you're using is outdated, has bugs, frequently requires updates, etc. (and you have to update it in many websites)

PageLime is an impressive CMS service which is so simple to use (both for the designer and client) + instantly integrates with your websites and business.

You can create websites how you used to and just add a special class: cms-editable to the parts that you want to be edited like text, images or links.

The pages are edited with live-previews and, besides simple editable regions, you can control more like:

• repeating-regions (where you can duplicate and move up/down items quickly)
• multi-level navigations
• server-side include files

It allows you to control any number of websites from the same interface with a permission-based multi-user interface where you can define "who can edit which website".

PageLime keeps track of every action you (or your client) make and you can restore a previously saved version of a page with a click.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nuggetz is a free CMS application for easily and quickly controlling websites where the content is not stored in a database.

It is powered with PHP and integrates with any website design. You can simply make a section of a web page editable by calling a code like $mynugget = new nuggetz("name");.

The application works with modal boxes and, once logged in, the editable sections are displayed like the screenshot above.

You can click to any section and edit it inside a WYSIWYG editor. The content is saved inside the files themselves (just like an HTML file).

Storytlr is an open source lifestreaming and micro blogging application where a single installation can be used by one or many websites.

It simply enables you to create a micro-blog which can aggregate content from popular services like:

• Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon
• Flickr, Picasa
• Facebook, Twitter
• Last.fm
• & more

You can create mash-ups to create stories from these data or just use the application for building a website that reflects your online social life.

Storytlr comes with ready to use themes and new ones can be created with HTML/CSS.

The application is built with PHP and uses MySQL as the database.

Pulse CMS is a simple content management system for managing small and static websites.

It enables you to CMS-enable any existing website within few minutes by simply uploading the "pulse folder" to the website.

Using the application, you can define the editable blocks of the website and it can display those pages inside a WYSIWYG editor to make any changes on them.

It has a built-in image manager to control all the images of the website and a backup feature to get a copy of the whole website anytime.

The application is built with PHP and uses flat files to store the data which means no SQL database is required.

Question & answer websites (like Stack Overflow) are great platforms for enabling communities to share knowledge and help each other.

Although they are kinda similar-in-function with the forum applications (check 9 Widely-Used And Free Forum Softwares), the main focus is finding the (best) answers.

Here are 5 free and open source or hosted platforms to create your own question-answer website:

Question2Answer

Question2Answer is an application that is built with PHP-MySQL that has a points-based reputation system.

Users can comment into any questions and they can be tagged.

It can be totally styled with CSS and has an admin interface to manage the whole application.

QSQA

QSQA enables anyone to instantly create a full-featured question-answer community where users can earn point/badges for their contribution.

It is written in Python and powered by the Django application framework.

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