cms made simple

Believe it or not, I was really close to scratching CMS Made Simple out of my CMS Focus "Top 30" list. Nothing against CMS Made Simple but it's just been difficult to report a lot of newsworthy events. So wouldn't you know it, here comes along CMS Made Simple 1.6 to keep the CMS in focus here at CMS Report.

Some of the new features and enhancements brought into CMS Made Simple 1.6 include:

• Content Type Changes - Major effort has been undertaken to make the system faster, better and easier to extend.
• Permissions Changes - The developers completely re-worked the content permissions to allow more flexibility, and allow greater control over what users are allowed to do with respect to content.
• New Themes and Content - Two new front-end themes have been developed, and the default content for new installations changed considerably.
• Forgot Password functionality in admin - The admin console now has the ability to handle forgotten passwords, if an email address has been associated with the admin account.
• 404 error handling changes - A new content type ‘Error Handler’ has been created to handle 404 errors.
• Site Preferences rewrite
• Site down IP address exclusion - When sitedown mode is enabled, it is now possible to exclude certain IP addresses from that restriction.
• Improvements/Enhancements - Including MenuManager, TinyMCE, Search, and Printing

Additional details can be found at CMSMadeSimple.org.

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.

Drupal was announced the winner in Packt Publishing's 2008 award for Best PHP Based Open Source CMS.

The Award for the best Open Source Content Management System written on a PHP/MySQL platform is today announced as Drupal. Receiving $2,000 as the judges’ and publics favourite, Drupal finishes ahead of Joomla! and CMS Made Simple, who finished on equal points as joint runners up and collect $500 each.

As Packt notes, this has become an annual tug of war between Drupal and Joomla! for top spot in these awards.

In the end, it was a combination of features that swayed the final votes and secured first position. The judges were complimentary about Drupal’s excellent installation of the system, modules and updates and especially the way it handles any errors during these processes. Comments were also reserved for Drupal’s strong social applications capabilities and how it integrates seamlessly with content management.

As most people know by now, I have a personal bias toward Drupal and have excused myself from judging on a panel where Drupal is a finalist.  So, instead of adding my own comments, I suggest we keep an eye open for the personal blogs of those sitting on the 2008 judging panel. Perhaps we'll find some details to how they may have judged the finalists for this year's best PHP open source CMS.

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.