Testimony

With a smile on his face, Scott Liewehr sent me a tweet the other day letting me know that he briefly plugged my name while co-hosting CMS-Connected. CMS-Connected is a 60-minute monthly news show, streamed live on the TPN Network with a focus on the web content management industry and includes CMS related news and commentary from leading CMS expert analysts and participating guests. It's a very good video production and well worth your viewing time if you have any interest in content management.

We made it! We made Jon Marks' updated Follow Forty Twitter CMS Gurus list.

So, you want to follow the CMS world on Twitter. How about the ability to follow the creme de la creme of the CMS Twitterati in a couple of clicks. Well, my friend, you’ve struck gold. [UPDATE: Even more gold than promised. The list is growing. More than 40]

Better yet, if you read the comments, we were added after some controversy. By the way, Jon has correctly included himself in the list.

Occasionally, I see a post that I have written as a reference in a white paper, a book, or somewhere else online.  I actually started CMSReport.com as a place for me to learn more about Web content management systems and information systems.  Whenever someone references CMS Report it signals that we have gone full circle where someone is also learning from me.  There is not a more awesome feeling than this.

One thing I have yet to achieve is being a legitimate reference at Wikipedia.  Until now!  CMS Report is being referenced on the wiki page for Frog CMS.

A month ago, I started observing an increase in traffic from a relatively new aggregation site called Alltop.  CMS Report is now being featured in Alltop's content management page which is dedicated to "all the top content management news".  Alltop recently expanded the number of topics they cover and I surmise that content management is one of those new topics.   While there are already a number of news aggregation sites referring their readers back to CMSReport.com (and if you're one of them...we thank you), Alltop is special.     

What makes Alltop so special? First of all, the site is a project associated with Guy Kawasaki.  Guy Kawasaki has a history with Apple but he is one of those successful IT guys with so much confidence in himself that his time at Apple alone doesn't define him.  If you check out his blog on a regular basis you'll come to understand what I'm trying to write here.

Secondly, Alltop is special because it was developed by a neighbor, Electric Pulp.  Electric Pulp is based in my city, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  I don't know what it is, but there seems to be a lot of successful tech companies with national presence to be found in Sioux Falls.  Go figure that one out.

It is my non-bias opinion that Jared Ritchey may be one of this century's finest writers.  Oh let's just choose a random post as an example and see what he has to say regarding content management systems.

I love well rounded and informative information. Bryan Ruby, the author, publisher, webmaster for CMSReport.com has a SPANK of good information and resources regarding many of todays top CMS solutions on the web.

My thanks to Jared for the nice compliment.  Most of Ritchey's other posts at his Wordpress site focus on Web design.  The content of those posts make a visit to his site well worth the time.

I must confess, I really don't fully understand how the Internet ranking systems actually work.  Ranking systems such as Google's PageRank and Alexa's Traffic Rankings seem to use a mystery of statistical analysis, algorithms, and a sprinkle of voodoo calculus to come up with the numbers they do.  Although most people lack the understanding to how these numbers are derived it is still fun to watch those rankings change from day to day.  For example, since the Fall of 2006 I've seen the rankings for CMSReport.com change from 830,790 to around a steady 90,000.

Last week, someone that goes by the name of Anti sent me an e-mail stating that she finally got a copy of the John K. Vandyk's and Matt Westgate's Drupal book, Pro Drupal Development.  To my surprise she also congratulated me for being quoted on the inside front cover.  Having a quote by me included in the book was a welcome surprise.