Best Open Source Social Networking CMS: Wordpress Wins, Drupal and Elgg second
Packt Publishing is starting to announce the various winners in its Open Source CMS Awards. The first category announced was the Best Open Source Social Networking CMS.
Packt is pleased to reveal that WordPress is the first winner of the 2007 Open Source CMS Award, picking up the best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System. In a very close category, WordPress came out in front of Elgg and Drupal, who finished joint second.
Judges comments for their decisions included:
- WordPress’s ease of configuration, professional approach, usability and enthusiastic community.
- Elgg as a true Open Source Social Networking CMS, its variety of themes and overall user experience.
- Drupal had a long list of positive comments from the judges and was praised as a good overall package.
Winners of the various categories will be announced throughout the week, including Best PHP on October 31st and Overall Winner on November 2nd.
About the Author
Bryan Ruby is owner and editor for CMS Report. He founded CMSReport.com in 2006 on the belief that information technologists, website owners, and web developers desired visiting sites where they could learn more about content management systems without the sales pitch. Although Bryan has been active in the content management community for a number of years, please do not call him a CMS expert. Bryan's preference is to be labeled a CMS enthusiast.
Outside of late night blogging hours, he is the Information Technology Officer for a field office in the federal government. Away from the computer he enjoys his family, bicycling, camping, and the outdoors.
Comments
#1 Congratulations to
#2 Anyone got links for social
#3 Congratulations to the
#4 Wordpress Social Networking Challenge
I've heard of Wordpress being used as a component for social networking sites, but not as the application used for social networking. I've asked Deane Barker if he came across any social networking sites using Wordpress while he was on the judging panel for this category. Before you pick on Deane, know that Wordpress wasn't his choice for best social networking CMS either, but Elgg (I agree!).
Now, I don't want to take away from Wordpress' win. The judges/voters have spoken. Like others though, I'm interested in what are the best social networking sites based on Wordpress. I suppose we could consider wordpress.com in it's own right as a social networking site (that relies heavily on blogging to sociallize). Though that site uses mu-wordpress for its software.
#5 I have to admit, I was also
I have to admit, I was also a bit surprised by that. Drupal was my vote on best social networking tool. I love WordPress and consider it the undisputed world champion of blogging, but social networking? I wonder if SNing is becoming as ill defined as Web 2.0?
Having said that - I am very pleased to see WP recognized. It is very underestimated and discounted in the utility provided the world.
I have my fingers crossed for Plone tomorrow. There's another tool that does not get due respect, IMO.
Amy Stephen
http://OpenSourceCommunity.org
http://OpenSourceCommunity.org
#6 I voted for...
#7 I'm glad I'm not the only
#8 A questionable choice
#9 The people's choice
One thing that is important to remember is that Wordpress was placed as a finalist in the social networking category not by Packt publishing, but by those in the public who voted. It's the CMS users that decided Wordpress should be in this category. At a stretch, I could see Wordpress being modified with plug-ins to allow more social networking features than the baseline Wordpress. Blogging does allow for some social interaction (just look at the comments here). Perhaps that's the reason those supporting Wordpress thought it would fit in this category.
Though, I agree Packt needs to figure an approach in the nomination process that allows for the best CMS to be nominated more by merit alone and less by popularity. Also, one would assume the panel of judges could have weeded out those CMS that didn't have merit for the category they resided. As a judge in the Overall category, Packt gave the judges plenty of room to make their own judgement and their was no interaction with the judges on the other panel. While I was pleased that Packt did not try to bias the judges decision making (I truly believe they want to see the best CMS chosen), I would like to have heard (and argue with) what the other judges were thinking. Perhaps, the panel of judges should choose the best CMS for their category via a collaboration process and not a voting process. I choose #1, you choose #2...so let's talk about it and see if one can win the other over. I'm always ready to rumble...