Content Strategy

On Monday, Packt Publishing announced the five finalists in each category of its 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award.  The five categories are Most Promising, Best PHP CMS, Best Other (Non-PHP) CMS, Best Social Networking CMS, and Overall Winner.  In the finals stage, the public as a whole is eligible to vote for each category through October 26th.  While that may seem like a long time for the polls to be open, I'd encourage you to vote early so that you have no excuse for why your favorite CMS didn't make it to the winners list.

Around this time last year, Packt Publishing announced the "top five" finalists for their award (no separate categories in 2006).  In 2006, those CMS projects that made it to the finalist list included Drupal, e107, Joomla, Plone, and Xoops.  When those five CMS were announced, I chose to double my efforts on covering those applications here at CMS Report.  Although the extra categories this year have brought quite a few more Open Source CMS into the foreground, I still don't see why I couldn't keep most of them on my CMS Focus radar scope.  With 16,000 people nominating their favorite CMS for this award, that amount of generated interest is hard to ignore.  Luckily, I already cover many of the CMS that did make it as a finalist...but there are still many new CMS on that list that will shake things up a bit here at CMSReport.com.

This post you are reading has been saved unpublished for a few days as I have feared it reads too much as a rant.  In this post, I'd like to discuss the difference between good and bad competition when it comes to similar "news sites" such as my own CMS Report.   I also want to touch on about how a CMS such as Drupal and Joomla brings both the good and the ugly online.  Unfortunately as with all technology, the modern CMS not only has been a blessing to sites dishing news for their writers and their users...but also a curse.

John Newton, Alfresco co-founder, is a man I have never met.  Regardless of this important fact, I feel like I have gotten to know a small part of him through his blog.  While Newton's blog may focus on Alfresco, his posts offers a wide range of insights on subjects such as commercial open source, content management,  enterprise software,  business processes, and information technology.  So if you have any idea of who I am through my own writings  it should be no surprise to you that I enjoy giving thought to some of

I list exactly 30 different content management systems at my site under the "CMS Focus" banner here at CMSReport.com.  My list does not necessarily include the top CMS out there, but those CMS that I currently find of interest.  A few of the applications I currently list have dropped off my radar scope and no longer impress me as a CMS I want to spend my time taking about.  So I'm currently looking at replacing a few of the CMS I have listed with other applications.

If you had the power to add a CMS I currently don't have listed, which CMS would that be?

So you want to write a successful blog?  Or perhaps just have a successful Website that people actually visit?  Lorelle reminds us just how to make your blog of interest to others.

I have many friends raised within countries which still play by these rules, where you are and do what your father or mother did, and maybe your grandparents before you, not what you want to do. Where apprenticeship programs are the only way into a trade. Where you are tested and found competent for a specific job, not because your heart leads the way.

This is a fantastic article found on ZDNet UK not only about open source content management systems but the issues that traditional publishers are now facing in either competing or adopting with today's Web CMS.  The article is written by Mike Barrett and is titled, "CMS evolution, publishing revolution?".  The author writes:

When I first started developing this website, CMSReport.com, it was my intention to also take "the opportunity to provide a series of how-to articles on building a Website using Drupal".  I wanted to help those getting started in using a content management system for their site by suggesting some tips and ideas that could make their life easier.  As time wore on, when it came to my own site I found that except for a few well written posts I failed miserably at this goal.

I'm pretty good at tasks such as developing, innovating, documenting, and system administration.  However, some people can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.  Unfortunately, I'm one of those people.  I have difficulty developing and documenting at the same time.  This isn't unusual as one of the most talented programmers I know struggles with documentation and will ask me for help in writing instructions for his own software.  My point is that when you find people who is blessed with being able to document their own work you need to let others know about that person.

I came across a very good article with regards to taxonomy titled, Search in Focus: Implementing a Taxonomy by Penny Crosman.  The article is a month or two old, but I haven't run across it before so maybe others haven't either.

BusinessWeek published an interesting article titiled, Did MySpace Really Beat Yahoo? The article discusses the difficulty to confirm which site actually has more traffic, MySpace or Yahoo.

"Blogging isn't a publishing strategy; it is a community strategy."

-Kevin Anderson, "Blogging isn't a publishing strategy", Corante, Nov 12, 2006