For the second straight year, Packt Publishing has announced Drupal as the recipient of its Overall Open Source CMS Award.  Drupal was also the winner this year in the award category for Best PHP Open Source CMS.

Packt’s annual Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award reached its climax today with the announcement that Drupal has won the Overall category, collecting a first prize of $5,000. Three months after it was launched and a staggering 20,000 votes later, Drupal finished ahead of Joomla! and DotNetNuke to retain the Award it won in 2007.

Joomla! also placed second in the Overall category followed by DotNetNuke for third position.

Finishing in second place and receiving $3,000 was Joomla!, the youngest of the three finalists and a previous winner of the Overall Award. Judges were impressed with Joomla’s ease of installation and ability to get a website up-and-running in a short space of time. Particular praise was reserved for its sizeable and enthusiastic community, which has allowed the project to grow so quickly in such a short space of time.  

In third place and receiving $2,000 was DotNetNuke, the only CMS in the final that is written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. DotNetNuke received positive feedback from judges who were impressed with its ease of development and security implementation features.

A complete list of current and previous winners the Open Source CMS Awards can be found at Packt Plublishing.

SilverStripe was announced as the winner of Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award.

SilverStripe is today exclusively revealed as the winner of the 2008 Most Promising Open Source Content Management System. The SilverStripe project receive $2,000, holding off strong competition from CMS Made Simple in the first runner up position with ImpressCMS and MiaCMS finishing joint second runner up.

Packt Publishing notes that SilverStripe's core team is heavily involved in not only their product but also with SilverStripe's users.

It received universal approval from the judges for its features and was praised as an excellent option for companies who want a powerful open source website that is professionally created and well supported. The judges were complimentary about SilverStripe’s scalability, use of Ajax, its healthy community and the impressive levels of input on the forums from its developers.

I had the honor of being one of the judges on the panel for Packt Publishing's 2008 Most Promising Open Source CMS Award.  My vote also went for SilverStripe followed by ImpressCMS for second place and CMS Made Simple for third place.  Since I wasn't sure how the other judges on the panel were going to vote, I'm always a little nervous of being too far off from the consensus.  Needless to say, I feel validated.  In a few days, I'll throw my notes online for how I ranked all five finalists in the most promising category.

Packt Publishing announced the winner of their 2008 Best Open Source Other CMS Award and it is Plone.

Packt is delighted to exclusively reveal the first category winner of the 2008 Open Source CMS Award as Plone. Run[ning] on the Zope application server, Plone wins the Best Other Open Source CMS Award and receives $2,000. Also recognized by the judges were dotCMS and DotNetNuke who finished second and third respectively, both picking up $500.

Although I'm not a Plone user, I've been quietly rooting for Plone to come out on top as the best non-PHP content management system.  This looks to be Plone's moment to shine.

I thought it was interesting that the judges praised "the ecosystem that is developing around Python and Zope is encouraging" for which supports Python.  While Python is one of the few languages I still work with, I've heard from other users over the years that they are hesitant to use Plone since they also would need to learn more about Zope.  In some ways, this award is a validation by the judges that running Plone on the Zone application server is a positive and not a negative.

I'm also happy to see dotCMS and DotNetNuke were recognized.  I've talked about DotNetNuke for some time and recently started covering the progress of dotCMS.

Earlier today, Packt Publishing announced the winners of their 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued People Award.  The MVP is a new category for Packt's annual Open Source CMS Awards.  In this category, "names were put forward by members of the Content Management System's development team and community and represent the exceptional support, guidance, and sheer amount of time that the MVPs have given up to support the development and growth of the respective CMS". 

Instead of just copying the winners list from Packt's site, I had hoped to do something different here. I started with a goal to look for each of the MVP's personal blog or project site,  I had hoped to find acknowledgments of the award was given by the MVP themselves or by someone else on their behalf.  Evidently I started searching a little too early and I only came across mentions of the awards from three four of the projects: Drupal (Earl Miles), Joomla! (Johan Janssens), and XOOPS (Onakazu). Plus... Plone.

Below are some excerpts from or about these open source MVPs.  If you are aware of more of the award winners recognizing or being recognized for their contributions...I would appreciate a link to the post.  Open source contributors like these MVPs deserve all the recognition we can give them.

There is so much that I want to do here at CMS Report, but my time has been limited these past couple weeks.  Some things that have been going on in my world:

1. As a judge for Packt Publishing's Open Source CMS Awards, I gave the publishing company my vote on the "Most Promising" CMS.  I dedicated a couple weekends to get the job done and I plan to post my reviews after Packt announces the winners (October 28).
2. I made the decision to drop my reseller account for Dakota Hosting.  The number of clients I host are few and over the past two years I've only been breaking even.
3. My post on Dell's Inspiron Mini 12 netbook brought in quite a bit of traffic to the site.  It looks like I may be a couple weeks off in my prediction for when this new netbook will finally hit the market.
   

With the polls closing in ten days for some of the best open source CMS out there, if you haven't voted already, you need to head over to Packt Publishing and let your voice be heard.  There are five finalists for differing categories to choose from.  Voting for the winners in each of the categories opened September 1 and ends on October 20, 2008.  This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges for the top three CMS in each category will then be voted for by a panel of judges.

This year, I'll be on the panel of judges for the Most Promising Open Source CMS.  The five fanalists in this category are:  CMS Made Simple, ImpressCMS, MemHT, MiaCMS, and SilverStripe.  I'm hoping to submit my choices for most promising CMS early next week.  This is going to be a tough choice for me as I have found myself impressed with each of the open source projects.  Many of these newer crops of CMS already have their eye on the ball by making sure they're ready to be used globally (multi-language capable, right to left text, etc).  Some of the older more established CMS still struggle to this day to make this happen in their projects.  

Packt Publishing announced the five finalists for each category of its 2008 Open Source CMS Award.  Last year, Drupal was the overall winner. Voting for the winners in each of the five categories opens September 1 and ends on October 20, 2008.  This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges for the top three CMS in each category will then be voted for by a panel of judges.

Incidentally, this year I'll be on the panel of judges for the Most Promising Open Source CMS.

Overall Open Source CMS Award

• DotNetNuke
• Drupal
• Joomla!
• Plone
• TYPOlight

Most Promising Open Source CMS

• CMS Made Simple
• ImpressCMS
• MiaCMS
• MemHT
• SilverStripe
  

The 2008 Open Source CMS Award launched today, inviting people to visit www.PacktPub.com and submit nominations for their favorite Open Source Content Management Systems. Now in its third year, the Award has helped to support a variety of Content Management Systems gain recognition in a crowded and high quality marketplace.

In 2007, Drupal ousted Joomla! as the overall winner of the Award, in what was another very close contest. With the introduction of four new categories in 2007, the Award succeeded in expanding the opportunities for a wider range of Open Source Content Management Systems to benefit. MODx won the inaugural Most Promising Open Source CMS Award, confirming its position as one of the most respected new CMS’s available. "Winning the award was a tremendous honor for MODx" said Ryan Thrash, co-founder of MODx. "For the team, it validates the past two years of hard work" he concluded.

A new category for 2008 is the Open Source CMS MVP Award, which will recognize the contributions to projects made by individuals that often go unnoticed. According to Damian Carvill, marketing manager at Packt, the company that runs the Award, this will prove to be a significant award. "For the large majority of Open Source projects, it is the tireless work from enthusiastic individuals that enable its growth and adoption, and these are the people that Packt feels is necessary to identify" Carvill said.

Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Content Management System at www.PacktPub.com/Award. The top five in each category will go through to final, which begins at the start of September. For more information, please visit Packt’s website www.PacktPub.com/Award.