More than 70 different Open Source Content Management Systems were nominated for the award with the top five being selected for the final. After eight weeks of voting from visitors to www.PacktPub.com and judges from The Open Source Collective, MySQL, the Eclipse Foundation, and CMSPros, Joomla! triumphed with the most votes, winning $5,000.
Joomla! is the youngest CMS of the five finalists having been forked by the then Mambo development team in August 2005. Joomla! was chosen due its ease of installation and use along with the active development and community that supports the project.
Coming in a very close second place and collecting $3,000 is Drupal which was commended for its ease of use and exceptional documentation. In third place came Plone, who receive $2,000. Built on the Zope platform, Plone is very different to the other CMS’s in the top five and was noted for its steep learning curve. However it was praised by the judges for its power, flexibility, the customization it offered and its integration with LDAP.
Choosing the top three proved to be a difficult experience for the judges, due to the quality of the finalists and their ability to suit different tasks depending on the objective of the user. “All the CMS’s that made the top 5 are very good” declared Scott Goodwin, representing The Open Source Collective, “and I wouldn’t hesitate to use any of them depending on what I’m trying to accomplish.”
The Award was designed by Packt to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System. The 2006 Award is the first of what is hoped will become an annual event for the company and the CMS community.”
Link: packtpub.com
