Bryan Ruby

Drupal was announced the winner in Packt Publishing's 2009 award for Best PHP Based Open Source CMS. Instant replay at the finish line may have been required as Packt reports that Wordpress and Joomla! were not too far behind the leading CMS.

We are pleased to announce that Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award. This category featured a very close contest between the top three, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla! in which Drupal ended up as the overall choice for the judges and the public.

Packt Publishing announced today the winner of their 2009 Best Open Source Other CMS Award. Using the word "Other" is Packt's way of saying non-PHP content management system. For the second straight year the winner for Best Open Source Other CMS is Plone.

Tony Pietrocola, Bridgeline Software, posted on their blog seven ways to "Avoid These Common Mistakes When Implementing WCM". Two of the tips he gives have been giving me trouble lately.

2. Have the requirements from all stakeholder groups been accounted for? One of the critical issues that sink CMS investments in the organization is missing all necessary input and buy-in.

This week, I spent a lot of time in various discussions on the negatives of Web content management systems (WCM). For all the excitement us CMS enthusiasts have for WCM, there is also associated frustration that threatens to dampen our spirit and kill the mission.

Earlier this week, Ektron Inc. announced the release of Ektron CMS400.NET version 8.0. Version 8.0 builds on Ektron’s social software and enterprise Web content management to allow for the creation of sites that today’s web users expect. Version 8.0 includes the new eMarketing Suite, complete with the analytics, multivariate testing, drag and drop page assembly, ecommerce and enhanced site management tools that marketing teams can use to drive measurable business results.

We lasted nine months. That's right, for nine months we hosted our Drupal site with a shared hosting account. Last January, I knew we were taking a gamble but the monthly cost savings for hosting the site was just too tempting. In this end though, CMS Report was too busy and exceeded the shared hosting provider's CPU usage policy.

MODx Web Development is a new book from Packt which will help users create a powerful, dynamic website by using the individual elements of MODx. Written by Antano Solar John this book is an example-driven tutorial, which will take readers from the installation of MODx through to configuration, customization, and deployment. It will enable them to build a fully-functional, feature-rich website quickly and without any programming language.

Even though I've wanted to focus more on MODx in this blog, I have to say I haven't done a very good job bringing this CMS and content management framework up for discussion. With the release of MODx Evolution 1.0 and the upcoming release of MODx Revolution 2.0 I have no doubt we'll be seeing more headlines for MODx.

Last week, MODx Evolution 1.0.1 was released. This release contains enough security improvements and bug fixes that the MODx developers consider the update a "mandatory upgrade" for any site running previous releases of MODx Evolution/0.9.X.

Mike Stefanello wrote to us earlier this month to talk about OfficeMedium. OfficeMedium is a web-based service that provides intranet and collaboration software for businesses and work groups. In a very competitive market, OfficeMedium appears set to try and win customers over by providing enriched business tools at a low reasonable price. OfficeMedium is pricing their services at a monthly rate of $8 per user plus $1 per Gigabyte used.

OfficeMedium utilizes the open source Drupal CMS. A case study for how Drupal was used to build OfficeMedium can be found at Drupal.org. Below is a copy of Mike's email talking about OfficeMedium.

We offer a brand-new web application that we believe your readers will be interested to hear about.

OfficeMedium: Web-based Intranet and Collaboration Software

OfficeMedium is a recently launched startup that offers on-demand, web-based intranet and collaboration software for businesses and work groups. The private and secure networks offer a wide array of features meant to centralize and streamline important information and data, unlike other applications which seem to focus on single, often over-detailed and confusing, offerings, such as project management, contact relationships, or "enterprise twitters".

Within a sleek, extremely simple and easy-to-use interface, OfficeMedium offers:

• Task and Event Management
• Personal and Group Calendars
• File Sharing, Storage, and Organization
• Contact and Company Information Management
• Automated Organization and Archiving
• Client Integration
• Social and Communication Features (such as private messaging, status updates, micromessaging, user profiles, shared blogging, poll creation, activity feeds, and more)

My inbox is just full of emails from companies and people requesting that I take a look at their CMS. To be honest, it's a little overwhelming to have so many requests because although time is my enemy I really do want to respond to everyone. For now though, I'm currently focused on reviewing this year's finalists in Packt's Best Open Source CMS. In other words, I have a long waiting list of CMS to review.

However, there are a few of these emails that I don't want to just sit on my computer and go nowhere. One of those emails include a sales pitch for the Kentico CMS. Kentico is a CMS that hasn't quite made it on my CMS Focus list but possibly should be.