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, the publisher of computer related books, announced the release of its new book OpenCMS 7 Development.

OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions.

Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API.

Packt is pleased to announce the release of a new book for business bloggers. Written by Paul Thewlis, WordPress for Business Bloggers teaches users to build an attractive and professional blog with advanced plug-ins, analytics, advertising, and SEO.

WordPress allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with many outstanding features. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users, who have created a large and diverse collection of plug-ins.

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.

Packt is pleased to announce the release of WordPress Themes Design, which is a complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes. Written by Tessa Blakeley Silver, this book will be invaluable to WordPress users or visual designers who want to develop a WordPress theme.

WordPress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license. It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development is a new book from Packt, which acts
as a practical tutorial for creating Drupal 6 modules with PHP. Written by Matt
Butcher, this book will help users to walk through the development of complete
Drupal 6 Modules.

Drupal is a free and open-source modular web
application framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP. It
can run in many environments, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
It's a modular system, with an elegant hook-based architecture, and great code.
These are a few of the perks that make Drupal a choice platform for developers
who want the power of an established CMS, but the freedom to make it work for
them. From social networking to AJAX to e-commerce, the hundreds of existing
modules attest to Drupal's flexibility.

Following the latest release of Drupal 6 in February 2008, Packt Publishing is pleased to announce an update to David Mercer’s best selling Drupal 4.7 book. Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6 is as much of an overhaul of the original book as Drupal 6 is over Drupal 4.7.

Drupal is a hugely popular and widely celebrated open-source Content Management System that is day-by-day becoming the first choice of people for building blogs and other websites. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Hillary Clinton, and many others utilize Drupal to fulfil their online requirements.

The updated book meets the booming demand for well presented, clear, concise, and above all practical information on how to move from establishing the need for a website all the way through to designing and building it like a pro, and finally successfully managing and maintaining it.