As we discussed a few weeks ago, the release of Joomla 2.5 on this day was expected.  Surpringly, knowing the release date seemed to make the wait longer. Without a doubt, Joomla.org will be a busy place the next few days. Joomla's marketing people tell me that Joomla! has been downloaded more than 28 million times and powers more than 1.6 million. Those are pretty significant numbers and this new version of Joomla! is expected to help continue the popularity of this open source CMS.

As I discussed in my previous articles, Joomla! for the first time includes multi-database functionality, beginning with Microsoft SQL. If you read the article, you also know that Joomla 2.5 also includes more than a dozen new features. You'll can also check out those features by going to joom.la/25features. But before you hop over to another site, you can find some additional details about Joomla 2.5 right now in this exclusive press release that we've acquired from sources secretly embedded in the Joomla! community.

The release of Joomla 2.5, a popular open source content management system, is expected to occur within the next few weeks. This release gives Joomla! fans a reason to celebrate and those new to the CMS a chance to consider Joomla! for thier next project. Like clockwork, the Joomla community is preparing the way by educating the masses on the new features and enhancements included in this version. I'm not an expert on the Joomla! development process, but I'm going to do my best here in summarizing the information that I've gathered so far on Joomla 2.5.

The general availability of the official Joomla 2.5.0 release is due on January 24, 2012.  Also, in case you missed it, Beta 1 of Joomla 2.5 was released just as the holidays were getting in full swing.  You can also expect another beta and a release candidate from the Joomla developers between now and Release 2.5.0. 

For those new to software development, the beta and release candidates of software typically is not suitable for production sites and should be used only for testing purposes. Testing the pre-release software isn't only a great way for you to get to know Joomla 2.5 better but it is also a great way to help the developers identify and fix bugs in the software. 

When I read the stories we post here at CMS Report, I am reminded how quickly the CMS market continues to evolve and mature. Every year, I worry that there is nothing "new" to write about in this information system niche only to have the developer, user, or owner of a CMS push another new story idea toward my screen. This time around when looking for the top ten content management stories of the year, I concluded we didn't have ten great CMS stories for 2011. Instead, I found more than two dozen great CMS stories for 2011.

Below are the top ten stories of 2011 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list are ranked based on the rate they were viewed since they first appeared at CMSReport.com.

Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2011

1. The 2011 Open Source Awards
2. Google+ first week of use review
3. 10 New Content Management Systems via CMS Focus
4. Another new term: Social Content Management
5. CMS Expo 2011 Series
6. Liferay Marketplace and Liferay Portal 6.1
7. CMS Redefined: Cloud. Mobile. Social
8. CMS Report upgrades to Drupal 7
9. DotNetNuke, Drupal, Liferay, and SharePoint in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals
10. CMS in the Fast Lane: Joomla! 1.7
    

Last weekend, digital agency water&stone, released their 2011 Open Source CMS Market Share Report. I consider this report one of the few non-bias and detailed surveys that come across my desk each year. The report isn't perfect, but the report does help give a good snapshot on the state of who's who in the world of open source content management systems.

You are most definitely going to want to take a look at the details in the report. The findings in this year’s report were based on a survey of more than 2,500 CMS users and additional research into a wide variety of measures of market share and brand strength. I'm still combing through the survey and taking note of the interesting individual nuggets of information that can be found in the results of the survey.

Not surprisingly, the report confirms the ranking position of open source's three most dominate Web content management systems in the market. The press release itself summarizes the results this way:

PHP-based systems WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal continue to dominate the web content management space. But, while the Big Three remain unchanged from last year, the Report concludes that WordPress retains a clear lead in the face of decreasing competition from Joomla!.

The decreasing competition from Joomla! can be seen most noticeably in the decrease of installations reported by the survey respondents in 2011 compared to 2010. The survey does note that this dramatic drop is likely due to the Joomla! community aggressively promoting the survey last year. This year, the promotion efforts were not coordinated and less influential. I only point this out because this is an example of where the report isn't "perfect" via inconsistencies in the yearly survey sample introducing  a margin of error in the trend comparisons. 

Using Facebook and Twitter, Steve Burge has compiled a list of social media responses to the question, "Why does Joomla rock?". It's an interesting list of 40 tweets and FB status messages and he's conveniently categorized the responses into short answers to the question.

Why does Joomla Rock?

• Quality
• Ease of Use
• Community
• Helps make business grow
• Helps make users happy

This is a very cool way to use social media and get a feel for what the fans think about your project or product. If you're interested in the individual responses to the questions, check out Steve's article at Joomla Community Portal.

This week, Joomla! 1.7 was officially released to the public. New features in this new version of the popular open source content management system include:

• One Click Version Updating - The new built-in updater handles updates for Joomla and Joomla extensions.
• Multilanguage improvements - You can now associate menu items in different languages for faster navigation. Language packs can now also be built to automatically select the best font for that language.
• Pre-defined search options for search menus. This allows developers to create a menu item that pre-fills out the search fields so end-users can have a built-in search for a specific phrase.
• Better example code for different plug-in types. The enables developers to more easily build custom extensions.
• The ability to automatically validate form data against a list of options during the save operation. This makes it easier to protect against hackers manipulating forms and trying to save invalid data.
• Enables the submit article form to automatically set the article category. This makes it easier for site administrators to restrict users to a specific categoryy meaning content isn’t accidentally added to the incorrect page on a website.
• Batch processing (copy & move) of articles is now available in the same way as it is for categories and menu items.

This is the second major release of Joomla! this year, with Joomla 1.6 released in early 2011. Given that new releases of Joomla! historically are measured in years instead of months this is something of a nice surprise to see from Joomla!. It can be weary on both users and developers waiting for the inclusion of wanted features found only in the next official release of their favorite content management system. I know in the past, I've expressed my own dismay for the lenthy development cycles of Joomla! betas amd release candidates.

One of the coolest things about CMS Expo 2011 was the opportunity to see five open source CMS "founders" together in one room. On the conference stage were Dries Buytaert (Drupal), Andrew Eddie (Joomla), Sigurd Magnusson (SilverStripe), Shaun Walker (DotNetNuke), and Per Ploug-Hansen (Umbraco).

Most people in the content management world will acknowledge that seeing these five guys together in the same room is a rare event. What you may not know is that for many of these open source leaders this event was the first time they have ever met one another.

We tend to focus so much of our time on our own projects that we lose sight of what is taking place outside of our own bubble. The benefits of open source projects getting to know one another better has me thinking a lot lately about the "The Strength of Weak Ties" and the importance of getting to know your competition.

CMS Expo 2011: Founders' Panel from SilverStripe on Vimeo.

The sound quality in the above video could be improved but I think we're just lucky enough to have the video. I'm not aware of any "official video" being taken by the conference organizers so we're fortunate the SilverStripe folks who shot this video were thinking ahead.