Drupal was announced the winner in Packt Publishing's 2008 award for Best PHP Based Open Source CMS.
The Award for the best Open Source Content Management System written on a PHP/MySQL platform is today announced as Drupal. Receiving $2,000 as the judges’ and publics favourite, Drupal finishes ahead of Joomla! and CMS Made Simple, who finished on equal points as joint runners up and collect $500 each.
There is so much that I want to do here at CMS Report, but my time has been limited these past couple weeks. Some things that have been going on in my world:
Drupal 6.5 and Drupal 5.11 were released yesterday. These new versions of Drupal are maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities. If you take a look at the release notes, you'll find that Drupal's core developers and security teams have been hard at work improving this open source content management system. With all the hard work done for you, it only makes sense to upgrade your Drupal site today (yes, we're running Drupal 6.5).
Details and download links can be found at Drupal.org.
Augustana College, a United States college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is using Drupal. According to Augustana's Web Editor the site was developed by Tim Broeker of Electric Jet using Drupal 5. Electric Pulp, a local Sioux Falls company, also contributed to the project by doing the design and CSS work.
I don't think I've ever met Tim Broeker, but what is interesting about this Drupal site developer is that he also has a Joomla! Core Team connection. Yes indeed, open source does matter.
Updated Sep 8 2008 per comments at CMSReport.com
The release of Ubercart 1.0 was announced earlier today. Ubercart is an open source e-commerce package (shopping cart) that fully integrates your online store with the open source CMS, Drupal. We've been watching Ubercart for some time and like some of the look-and-feel it borrows from osCommerce.
Some of the features in Ubercart 1.0 as reported by their shopping cart's Website include:
Last week, I mentioned that the the Drupal SMFforum Integration module was no longer being supported by the module's project leader, "vb". Apparently, Simple Machines had not granted permission to the module developer to distribute code found in the SMF application as required by the Simple Machines License.
Drupal and WordPress, were the only CMS applications that made it to the winner list in CNET's hosted Webware 100.
Development of the SMFforum Integration module for Drupal is no longer. Amy Stephen over at OpenSourceCommunity.org pointed out on her blog that the module's project leader, "vb", pulled the module due to licensing disagreements with SMF LLC. Amy references vb's original post at the Drupal forum, but she has a lot more to say. Amy's an active participant in the Joomla! community, a community which had their own issues with a bridge between Joomla! and SMF.
According to vb's post, an email sent by Michael "Oldiesmann" Eshom, Project Manager, Simple Machines LLC stated that:
The problem isn't with the smfforum.module file or the packages distributed on drupal.org. The problem is with the "smf_api_subs.php" file that you're distributing as part of the smf api package - it contains modified versions of several SMF functions, and you did not ask for permission to use this code or distribute it.
It appears that Simple Machines LLC doesn't have so much of a problem with bridging SMF and Drupal as much as they have issues with their own code being used without proper permission. The Simple Machines License clearly states that "Any Distribution of a Modified Package or derivative requires express written consent from Simple Machines LLC." No word on whether Simple Machines LLC would endorse the use of their code if permission is asked.
I have to admit that when someone submits a story and I trust them...I sometimes don't read the whole article before I publish it. So until I read Dean Barker's Gadgetopia, I didn't realize his company, Blend Interactive, was featured in eZ's SHARE! magazine. The irony is that if I had read an article posted at my own site by one of eZ System's own people...Dean's post wouldn't have been new news to me. Sigh, I have been just too busy...
The April issue of Adobe Edge contains the article, Review of open source content management systems. The article provides an overview of what the author describes as "five of the top open source software (OSS) solutions". The five open source CMS included in the author's list are CMS Made Simple, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and XOOPS. After reading the article, I found myself wondering how we "reviewers" can actually improve our reviews of open source CMS. More importantly, I've come to the realization that I can no longer claim to be non-biased in which CMS I believe is the best out there.
The author does a fine job in the article describing the similarities and differences between the CMS being reviewed. However, one of the issues I have in this article and many others I've read that review CMS is the big jumps in the conclusion:
Drupal, Joomla!, and XOOPS are best for building an e-commerce site because all three offer:
- Inventory management
- Support for third-party payment processing mechanisms (such as PayPal)
- Modules for shipping and sales tax calculators
- Shopping cart functionality
While it is true that Drupal, Joomla! and XOOPS can do e-commerce, none of these CMS can do that straight out of the box. I can just imagine a shop owner or design company trying Drupal, Joomla!, or XOOPS for the very first time and wondering, "how the heck do I get a shopping-cart into the CMS?". While the author does hint in the article that third-party modules are needed to make the e-commerce work, I think the author would have been better off better explaining that "some work is required" to get those features into the CMS.