Choosing the right CMS is the most important decision when starting your development process. Because you can plan your site needs and it’s solutions. This will give you an idea of ​​the design, functionality, and performance of your proposed site. Determining the best PHP CMS is therefore the most important part of the development cycle. So choosing the best one requires proper knowledge.

There are many open source CMS on the market today. But choosing the one depends on your needs. Whether you want to create a simple dynamic website or a full-featured eCommerce store. There are many types of CMS on the market that can help lighten your workload. Not every developer wants to write HTML and CSS to build this web pages.

These PHP CMS platforms help developers offload traditional workloads. Dynamic web apps, which can grow to thousands of pages over time, are easier to develop using a CMS platform. Intelligently streamline development-related jobs.

So let’s take a look at 8 Best PHP CMS for developers for either a standard CMS or eCommerce project. So you can get a better idea of ​​which platform to choose for your next project

1. Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source CMS platform that is coded in PHP. It was initially developed as a student community solution. But later evolved into a full-fledged open source PHP CMS. This CMS provides developers with the opportunity to develop flawlessly highly optimised websites. And this platform is preferred by most developers, due to its rich features of modern app development.

WordPress uses plugins, while Drupal provides modules to perform custom functions on websites. The platform has a wide range of features and other options. Making it one of the best PHP CMS on the market. Many large organisations around the world uses Drupal for their app.

A CMS is an application plan to make website development easy and simple. This allows you to add various functionality and monitor the content for your website. These type of sites are typically created by designers using various languages ​​and technologies such as PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. So Custom Drupal modules are modules that you assemble yourself. Developing custom modules requires some knowledge of Drupal’s API and PHP coding.

2. October

OctoberCMS is another Laravel-based CMS which get used by thousands of digital institutions and businesses to build their websites. This CMS offers flexibility, simplicity, and a modern design for building high quality apps and websites.

As this is a self-hosted open source CMS. You can also install it separately on your hosting server. This CMS works well with third-party integrations. And boasts a large community supporting over 300 themes and plugins.

3. Craft CMS

Craft is a sort of new CMS platform written in PHP. As it has a low user base. But not because it’s missing something. But market penetration can take a while for everything. However, the developers acknowledge it. So you can seamlessly build front-end environments with Craft.

All you need is knowledge of HTML and CSS. The back-end is clean and the content editors won’t have a hard time working with it feature. In many cases, you can publish your content using the Craft PHP content management system.

As it’s lightweight. It can integrate with your hosting provider online and you won’t be abusing your server resources, so less performance issues. The only drawback that you the developers will notice is that it’s not open source. But it works well, supports a ton of features, is developer friendly, and provides effective security.

4. WordPress

You can never go wrong with WordPress. It has a reputation for being the most widely used open source CMS for web development in the world. WordPress allows you to build so many applications on any PHP hosting. It is also very advanced. Whether it’s a simple blog or an eCommerce store, WordPress has a solution for everything.

WordPress has a plugins for everything. Don’t know how to write code? No problem. There is always something available in the plugin library. Redirects, SEO, social media integration, site health checks, analytics, and more.

Needless to say, most of the web uses WordPress. Its robust security features support many private and government websites around the world. Finding downsides would mean that you need to nitpick. But,like the web, open-source code has some loopholes that make it an easy target for those bad actors (hackers). While customising your WordPress site may require someone with some coding knowledge to play around.

5. Contao

A free and open-source CMS written in PHP. It’s was formerly known as TYPOlight. This CMS is suitable for medium to large websites.

It is user-friendly. With features like a multilingual back-end, intuitive operation, and separate administration level. This CMS has a theme manager built-in so users can easily manage their themes. It allows you to design your website with ready-made modules.

6. Joomla

Joomla is yet another PHP CMS and its reputation precedes it. So if you want to set up a blog or publishing site, you should put Joomla in your shortlist. It’s like WordPress which isn’t a bad idea, so it is familiar. Using Joomla allows you to create multiple blogs and dynamic sites.

When it comes to data integration, Joomla PHP CMS can be integrated with different versions of SQL. It can be easily integrate with your PHP hosting provider and help you get started to build responsive websites. Joomla offers several themes and extensions that you can use to create beautiful web apps.

Joomla is packed with an intuitive user interface, scalability features and regular security patches to protect against hackers on the web.

One downside is this platform is it’s not the best when doing SEO, so you may face problems when doing SEO. There’s a better CMS options. Modules are somewhat lacking and if you have made some modifications to the CMS, plugins may not work correctly.

7. ExpressionEngine

If your website has a lot of content. Then you should consider using ExpressionEngine and it handle this load. Developers can modify the script by tinkering and tweaking it a bit. And more functionality can be added.

When updating your content it is immediately visible to visitors. This CMS platform is very versatile, fetching content from various databases and applying relevant formatting. Your visitors and users will get the best visual and reading experience on all devices.

So, take advantage of custom edit forms, HTML-agnostic templates, preview pane, SEO integration, security improvements and more. While on the downside the context boxes can make navigating and editing content a little bit difficult.

8. OpenCart

OpenCart is suitable for eCommerce site. This platform allows over 20 ways that visitors can pay when they visit to your website. This platform have over 12,000 extensions in the arsenal, which means there’s a lots of customisation options.

It’s the best open source CMS. Allowing developers to easily update their own source code and verify the authenticity of previously written code. The interface is intuitive and you shouldn’t have too much trouble navigating as a new user. The Language Support Library is one of the largest. Product category support is also good. Whatever is in your inventory you have something.

Developers can benefit from OpenCart when creating full-featured eCommerce stores. However, technical knowledge may be required before attempting customisation. Additionally, reports of traffic spikes can freeze your website but that’s the case with any CMS if the load too big to handle.