Most CMS packages are PHP based, why is this?

I am just going out of my tree looking at the various Sourceforge offerings and attempting to make heads, tails or midsections out of them. So far, Joomla seems to be the most promising, but since I am about to actually install it instead of poring over tutorials, the proof will be in the PUTting (bad, bad pun.)

Before I take this big leap, and risk site shutdown for a week stamping out all my mistakes and bugs I am calling for any other suggestions about CMS that people find better, or worse, than this one.

I've noticed nearly all these systems are a) PHP-centric and b) database-driven. Are there any that are NOT either of these, and gain from not being so? I really am new to content management systems though not to HTML and (most) CSS. I want to have - primarily - various forms of simple interactivity onsite, areas for regular fora and also anonymous discourse, possibly a zone of collaboration where sound files could be uploaded anonymously for the Choronzon project to use in its own opuses. Those are just a few ideas, many more trickle in daily.

My New Years' Resolution this year was to make choronzon.org WHAT it SHOULD be, not just what it IS. And I am in the habit of keeping my resolutions. New Years' being the only non-religious and non-political based holiday, I find that worthy of celebration, and part of that for me has always meant keeping my resolution,

Psychaotic333

The idea behind CMSs being database driven is because of the following premises: a)If you need a CMS you must have a lot of content to organize and b)Databases are the best way to organize a lot of information so logically it follows that you would use a database to organize all of the information.

The reason PHP is so often used is probably because it is very readable, simple, and well suited for the task. CMSs are not super-technical in nature. I don't mean to put them down because they are good at what they do, but they're a simple tool. You don't need a lot of technical complexity to issue a few queries on the database to get content to the page. That being said, many choose PHP because it is simple, lightweight, and good at doing SQL queries and writing them to a page.

That's it, in a nutshell. At least I think anyway. I'm sure someone will have another take on such a broad question.

Not broader, just an extra.
PHP is free, widely used and very easy to program. So when you have an open source CMS PHP and want to chnage its core or add extra functions, it is very easy for almost anyone to adapt the code to their own needs.

Ronald :cool:

Well put. I agree. ;)