It's easy to start a list of the great features of TYPO3 simply because there are so many. It's more difficult to complete the list without leaving out some items that may be considered important to the many users that use, or could use TYPO3. Here's a brief list of what we consider to be the reasons TYPO3 is the best open-source content management system available. To see a more detailed feature list, take a look at the extraordinarily long one on typo3.com, the official TYPO3 website.

Ninety-five percent of content and record editing in TYPO3's backend takes place in dynamic web forms that unify the editor's experience in the backend. The regular task of managing database records and content records never changes significantly from one record type to another.

TYPO3 also sports a handy context-sensitive menu which, much like a right mouse click, reveals options available for a given record type. This menu shows options like "Edit Page Properties" and "Delete" for a page record, or "New File" for a directory in the file system.

Help is always available in the backend, in the form of question mark icons next to most fields. These icons bring up a help document related to that specific field.

Organizing pages is one of TYPO3's strongest points, as it uses a hierarchical page structure, also known as the page tree. Much like outlining a large document, this aids in organizing the entire web page document into sections and subsections, making navigation easier for you, and for the users of the site. When browsing the page tree it is also possible to expand or hide branches to reveal the section you're working on.

The TYPO3 Extension Repository offers hundreds of extensions created by developers from all around the world that were willing to create and share. Much of what TYPO3 has achieved is owed to these dedicated and generous volunteers. Cast Iron Coding has provided one of the more popular extensions, a native TYPO3-based web forum (extension key: chc_forum).

Just because these extensions are freely available doesn't mean they don't take time and know-how to make them work. Many are much more sophisticated than they may seem when viewed, configured on a live website.

It often helps to talk to someone who's familiar with the extensions before diving into the extension repository blindly. With help, however, it's probably possible to do exactly what you need to do with what's already available. If it's not possible, the TYPO3 API makes doing what you need to do possible with the help of programmers.

TYPO3's backend permissions systems allows the site administrator to organize backend user groups, and assign users to them to make sure each user has only the ability to do what is relevant to her job.