There are many open source content management software solutions available on the internet. Just a quick perusal of the search results for CMS and Content management system on Sourceforge or any of the other popular open source software websites will yield a virtual cornucopia of CMS tools, modules, plug-ins and engines and templates.

Written using PHP and generally relying on mySQL or a similar database to store configuration values and content, these open source content management solutions generally provide an excellent out of box experience but are also able to serve those who wish to extend their sites capabilities as well as modify the look and feel. Custom CMS websites are becoming more and more popular, and there are many flavors of CMS to choose from.

For the high static textual content, multiple author bases and ease of use and template design, Drupal is an excellent choice. This lean CMS is a great one for organizing lots and lots of static text documents like scientific papers and academic documents of all sorts.

For the more robust community based package that allows not only for content organization, but also forums and other interactive content such as moderation systems, banner ad trackers, and member customization you can try PHP-Nuke and Post nuke for the everything you could possibly need and the kitchen sink or the Swiss army knife type approach.

Another contender for the community portal type high content sites is the well designed Geeklog.

For those of you out there who want to reap the benefits of ecommerce, there is an open source ecommerce package called OSCommerce that works right out of the box and can allow for webmasters to easily create fully functional web stores complete with shopping cart and user profiles.

No matter what type of content you intend to publish on the net, be it blog or community site, there is an open source CMS solution tailored to your needs.