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Content Management Systems (CMS)

If you are starting out on your first website, this may not mean anything to you. Content management systems, particularly those that are open-source systems provide a range of features in modules so you do not need to write code. It is a faster way to get a robust and feature-rich site up and running. They are used to build dynamic web sites with a broad range of features and services including

blogs
bulletin boards
chat
classified
dashboards and portals
discussion / forums
document management
events calendars
FAQ management
groupware
guest books
help desk
job postings
link management
mail forms
metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and
news aggregation,
newsletters
photo gallery
polls
publishing workflow,
RSS
search engine
site map
surveys
template creation and management
tests and quizzes
user administration,
user contributions
XML publishing for content sharing purposes.

They are usually equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability to be able to support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.

How to Choose A CMS

CMSMatrix - Here's a website that has an excellent, detailed and all-inclusive list of almost every CMS out there and their features. I've noticed that they are not all up to date, though. Here is a comparison of some of the more common and popular CMS's, and links to each CMS, listed by name and version:
- Drupal 4.5.2
- Geeklog 1.3.9
- Mambo 4.5.1
- PHP Nuke 6 (popular but has security issues0
- phpwcms 1.1 RC4
- phpWebSite 0.10.0
- TYPO3 3.7
- Xoops 2.06
OpenSourceCMS is another website that has both comparison and explanations