The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award Finalists have been announced. (List and vote here.) I'm a bit disappointed that Habari didn't make the list, but I'm not shocked about that.

Below are the categories with the finalists and my thoughts on the selections.

Best Social Networking Open Source CMS Finalists
Drupal
Elgg
LifeType
Moodle
WordPress

WordPress is NOT a social networking CMS. It's a blog. LifeType is NOT a social networking CMS, it's a blog. Now LifeType does have multi-blogs out of the box, so I can understand why it's listed there (sort of) but WordPress doesn't fit. WordPress MU may fit, but not WordPress proper.

Elgg IS a social networking platform. Drupal can be, too. Elgg should win, but I can see Drupal winning here.

Most Promising Finalists
dotCMS
MODx
Nuke Evolution
SilverStripe
TYPOLight

The only ones in this category I've tried are MODx and SilverStripe. SilverStripe is nice, but lacks a decent administration section. (I was never able to change the site name, for example.)

Based on my experiences I'd vote for MODx.

Best PHP Open Source CMS Finalists
CMS Made Simple
Drupal
e107
Joomla!
PHP Fusion

I've never been able to figure out why e107 would be considered a "Best Of" cms. It's nice, but I really don't think it deserves to be in the same Best Of list as Drupal and Joomla!

Joomla! won last year, but I'm still rooting for Drupal.

Best Other Open Source CMS Finalists
mojoPortal
OpenEdit
OpenCms
Plone
Silva

I'm not familiar with these systems (except for Plone) so I'll refrain from comment.

Overall Winner Finalists

CMS Made Simple
Drupal
e107
Joomla!
PHP-Fusion

Yes, it's the same list as the "Best PHP CMS Finalist" and I'm not sure if it's a mistake or not. But either way, my vote goes for Drupal. Joomla! may have all the good press around it, but I find it difficult to manage in the admin section (although it really does look nice, setting up a site is way too difficult, even compared to Drupal.)

This article was written by david and published on
September 10, 2007 at 8:45pm.
The article was given the following tags:

• internet
• open source
• packt