Joomla

A couple days ago, I posted CMS Report's Top Ten Stories of 2009. The articles listed were ranked by popularity based by how many times viewed and the rate that they were viewed through the year. Popular stories do not always signify well written articles or are always an indication of personal favorites. Each year, I write a number of content management or IT related articles that I love but for various reasons you the people didn't have interest in reading and sharing.

Below are some of my favorite articles written in 2009 that were not a part of the previously posted Top Ten list. If I had a Top 20 Stories list the articles in both of these listings would be included.

• Looking forward to Microsoft's Windows 7
• Reviewing Barrie North's Joomla! 1.5 book and video
• The problem is bigger than SharePoint
• Testing the water with Acquia Search for Drupal
• Shortcomings of Enterprise Wiki Deployments
• Two CMS Worlds on Twitter
• Charging for online news doomed to fail
• Theme development and the GPL
• Judging Five Overall Best Content Management Systems
• Quoting IT: Addison Berry
  

In the world of open source CMS there is no comparison more attention getting than an article comparing Drupal and Joomla!. Probably, the granddaddy Drupal vs Joomla! comparisons of them all was posted over three years ago by the Joomla SEO company, Alledia. I extended the discussion Alledia started with my own comparison between Drupal and Joomla. My article evidently struck a chord in late 2006 and currently is approaching near 200,000 reads.

Good comparisons between Drupal and Joomla! are popular because quality comparisons between the two applications are rare. It's very difficult to have passion for one CMS, be well informed on both CMS, and in the end be non-bias in your comparison. In the three years since I wrote my article, I've only come across three additional comparisons between Drupal and Joomla! that I thought worthy to bookmark.

I haven't updated my own article comparing Drupal and Joomla because I have developed a bias opinion over the years that I can't overcome. Both are good applications in their own right, but in the end I almost always recommend Drupal over Joomla!. That's why I'm glad to see Alledia update their own comparison between these popular CMS with "Joomla and Drupal - Which One is Right for You? Version 2".

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.

Several weeks ago, I mentioned the Wordpress for BlackBerry client which allows you to submit articles to your WordPress blog remotely. Recently, CMS Report, was pointed to a Joomla! client for the iPhone, the J Admin Mobile! application.

Similar to Wordpress for BlackBerry, J Admin Mobile! (JAM!) allows you to manage many of the core features of your Joomla! 1.5 site remotely. We can only conclude that the smarter and more Web capable our phones become the more established this trend of moving the CMS client over to mobile devices will become.

JAM! 1.4.0 was recently submitted to the Apple App store with the developers expecting to see the updated version available soon. Some of the new features in JAM! 1.4.0 include:

• Inserting images into articles
• Adding users
• Ability to change the user type (Registered, Author, etc)
  

Barrie North has a problem. He can't stop talking about his favorite content management system, Joomla!. So last year, he decided to write his own Joomla book titled appropriately, Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide. The problem is that people like North are never willing to let that be enough. As Joomla! 1.5 continues to evolve since its initial release so too has North's offerings. Two weeks ago North's publisher, Prentice Hall, sent me a second edition of Joomla! 1.5 as well a new video from their LiveLessons series, Fundamentals of Joomla!. Unlike last year, I decided to actually review the book as well as watch the video.

Let me first say, I'm a reluctant book reviewer. There is nothing that weighs on a person's busy day than having publishers send me a steady stream of content management related books for review. Eventually, those technical books begin stacking up on my desk and secretly I know half of those books aren't worth my time or your money. Luckily for all of us, North's Joomla 1.5 book and Fundamentals of Joomla! video are well worth the purchase. I can't help but give two thumbs up to both North's updated Joomla! 1.5 book and new video.

Idealware is providing online a report on open source content management systems by comparing Wordpress, Joomla!, Drupal, and Plone.  This 60-page independent Idealware report in PDF format provides both an introduction to the topic and a very detailed comparison of the four systems. The report also includes their new directory of the consultants and firms who help nonprofit create websites and implement these Content Management Systems.

The year 2008 was another great year for CMS Report. In 2008, we posted close to 500 articles to the front page. Below are the ten most read articles that were posted for the year.

Similar to last year, three of the top stories have little to do with content management systems.  It seems that there is more interest in gadgets than content management systems!  Hopefully CMS Report can help change that.

For the second straight year, Packt Publishing has announced Drupal as the recipient of its Overall Open Source CMS Award.  Drupal was also the winner this year in the award category for Best PHP Open Source CMS.

Packt’s annual Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Award reached its climax today with the announcement that Drupal has won the Overall category, collecting a first prize of $5,000. Three months after it was launched and a staggering 20,000 votes later, Drupal finished ahead of Joomla! and DotNetNuke to retain the Award it won in 2007.

Joomla! also placed second in the Overall category followed by DotNetNuke for third position.

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.

Earlier today, Packt Publishing announced the winners of their 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued People Award.  The MVP is a new category for Packt's annual Open Source CMS Awards.  In this category, "names were put forward by members of the Content Management System's development team and community and represent the exceptional support, guidance, and sheer amount of time that the MVPs have given up to support the development and growth of the respective CMS". 

Instead of just copying the winners list from Packt's site, I had hoped to do something different here. I started with a goal to look for each of the MVP's personal blog or project site,  I had hoped to find acknowledgments of the award was given by the MVP themselves or by someone else on their behalf.  Evidently I started searching a little too early and I only came across mentions of the awards from three four of the projects: Drupal (Earl Miles), Joomla! (Johan Janssens), and XOOPS (Onakazu). Plus... Plone.

Below are some excerpts from or about these open source MVPs.  If you are aware of more of the award winners recognizing or being recognized for their contributions...I would appreciate a link to the post.  Open source contributors like these MVPs deserve all the recognition we can give them.