Drupal was announced the winner in Packt Publishing's 2009 award for Best PHP Based Open Source CMS. Instant replay at the finish line may have been required as Packt reports that Wordpress and Joomla! were not too far behind the leading CMS.
We are pleased to announce that Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award. This category featured a very close contest between the top three, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla! in which Drupal ended up as the overall choice for the judges and the public.
Drupal receives $2,000 in award money with both Wordpress and Joomla! as joint runner ups collecting $500 each. As Packt notes, this is the first time Wordpress has worked its way into the top three in the Best PHP CMS category.
While Drupal and Joomla! have always consistently featured among the top three in this category, WordPress made its way into the top five for the first time. The fact that it was outranked by Drupal by a very slight margin indicates how popular it has become with users as well as developers over the past year.
This award is another validation for Wordpress that it is finally losing its reputation as a blog-only application. The yearly tug-of-war between Drupal and Joomla! has now become a three-way tie with Wordpress now in the mix.