2009 Review: Open Source CMS Advancements (Poll)
Since CMS, or content management solutions, are a pivotal part of the web development industry, I thought that I would do a year-end review of the top open-source solutions that are on the market and try to highlight some areas of advancement that took place. One thing that was evident to me in 2009 was the core advancements that were made in many of the open-source content management community.
Not only did we see a lot of core improvements to established solutions like Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal, but we also saw some some emerging solutions make some big strides. One of these solutions that my partners and i utilized this past year was MODx.
Content Management Systems in 2009
In terms of market share Wordpress led the group of open-sourced content management solutions by a large margin (averaging 433,767 downloads per week). Second on the list was Joomla (averaging 189,429 weekly downloads). Drupal was the third most popular content management solution (averaging 62,500 weekly downloads). These figures are from CMS Wire’s 2009 report, a very interesting report if you are a web developer. In terms of installations and evaluations, Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal also topped the group. The rankings according to adoption were flip-flopped with Drupal gaining the most ground, followed closely by Joomla and Wordpress. In terms of brand recognition and overall perception, Wordpress led the pack by an impressive margin.
Advancements in Plugin Development (Wordpress)
Aside from the core advancements that were made in 2009 there were also a ton of plugins released by the development community. In the case of Wordpress, the CMS that I follow the closest, I was most impressed with some of the plugin releases that addressed common needs such as e-commerce, messaging, event management, and social media. There has also been a lot of talk about paid or premium plugins this past year. This idea was met w/ a lot of debate inside the wordpress community. For years everything wordpress has been readily available for free. Personally, I have no problem with paid or premium plugins. I think that if developers are able to actually put a price tag on their contributions that it will go a long way toward advancing the plugin options that we have available to us as developers.
Advancements in Theme Development (Wordpress)
There were also some major advancements in the wordpress theme community as well. Some leaders in that community like Brian Gardner and WooThemes really stepped up to the plate and delivered some nice foundations for us to design our client projects from. There were also some nice multi-purpose themes like Thesis and WP-Remix that gained a lot of traction. I reviewed the WP-Remix wordpress theme earlier this year here if you are interested. Another neat product for theme development that I stumbled upon this past year was a WYSIWYG theme generator called Artisteer, I also reviewed their product here if you are interested.
What advancements will we see in the wordpress theme community in 2010? Honestly I think we are going to see some major advancements, I know from following his tweets that Brian Gardner is working some pretty cool things at StudioPress. I also think that we are going to see more solutions become available like PSD2CSS that will convert PSD Photoshop Files to Wordpress themes. I have also heard of this being approached from a Photoshop plugin perspective as well, meaning that you could export wordpress themes from Wordpress. It’s just a matter of time if you ask me, this is where it’s at. Functionality for Wordpress is already there for Wordpress, design limitations are the only real constraints at this time.
Poll: What is Your Favorite CMS to Work With?
Please take a few seconds to complete the poll below and let us know what your favorite open-source content management solution is to work with.
#RefreshCA Meeting Reminder – Tuesday, Sept. 29th
I just sent out our monthly Facebook meeting notice tonight for the Central Arkansas Refresh meeting. If you are not familiar w/ #RefreshCA, be sure to check out our website for an explanation. As I mentioned a few days ago, this month should be pretty cool, we have proud new father Rob McBryde coming to speak about Joomla, and as usual we have swag and software licenses, etc. We are also going to discuss some ideas for our last two meetings of the year and see what everyone would like to do in regards to scheduling due to the holidays.
We also need to discuss topics for our last two meetups of the year and see what the group wants to talk about. Bryan Jones recently suggested we do some sessions on user experience, and everyone that I have spoken to has agreed that that sounds like an awesome idea. Be thinking though and bring your ideas, I still think that we should rent those inflatable sumo suits and have a tournament for December…
Also, since we are going to be competing with the Dave Matthews Band this month, be sure to help spread the word and bring a friend if you can so we can have a good turnout. If you haven’t already, be sure to join our Facebook Group and follow @refreshca on Twitter for the latest news and information…
For directions to our meeting location, The Flying Saucer, see my blog post earlier this month for a map… You can also RSVP via Twitter below (thanks to Keith Crawford for setting that up). It’s not necessary to RSVP for the meetings but it does help us to have a headcount so we can let the Saucer know ahead of time how many of us to expect. You can also RSVP via Facebook as well…
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#RefreshCA Meeting – Tuesday, Sept. 29th
Be sure to mark your calendars for Tuesday, September 29! That’s the date of our next Central Arkansas Refresh meeting. We will be meeting in our usual location, the basement at The Flying Saucer in downtown Little Rock (see the map below for directions). This past month Robert Blake did a great presentation on Tumblr, if you missed it, you can find some details here..
This month Rob McBryde is going to be giving an overview about Joomla Content Management System. Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Be sure to bring a friend or co-worker with you this time. Meeting starts around 6pm, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere and cool place to unwind after a long day at the office. If you are interested, join our Facebook Group so we can send you meeting reminders, etc.
People Get Touchy When You Talk CMS
Recently Glen Stansberry did a post on the popular Nettuts website about the 10 most usable Content Management Solutions. In his post he chose Wordpress as the top CMS, which wasn’t a huge surprise to me because I love Wordpress already, but it wasn’t the CMS’s that he mentioned or how he ranked them in terms of usability that generated the most commentary, it was the CMS that he excluded that raised the biggest stink…
In case you didn’t see the post, you can read it here, be sure to checkout the comments below mentioning the exclusion of MODx. Also, here’s how the CMS’s were ranked according to usability:
There are plenty of options when it comes to picking a content management system for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it’s built in, and who is going to be using it, it can be a nightmare trying to find the "perfect" CMS for a project.
However, some CMSs have a slight edge over the rest of the competition because of the usability of the software. Some are just easier to install, use and extend, thanks to some thoughtful planning by the lead developers. Here are 10 of the most usable CMSs on the web to use in your next project.
- Wordpress
- Drupal
- Joomla
- ExpressionEngine
- TextPattern
- RadiantCMS
- CushyCMS
- SilverStripe
- Alfresco
- TYPOlight
Personally, I was surprised to see MODx excluded from this list as well, I don’t see it outranking Wordpress in terms of usability, I can walk a client through the management of their Wordpress site in a few minutes over the phone while watching a football game on television, but I do see MODx as being a more viable solution than some of the CMS’s mentioned.
In fact, there are a few solutions mentioned here that I have heard very little about. I hang out with a lot of developers at events like Central Arkansas Refresh and I can honestly say that no one has ever mentioned running some of these solutions.
One thing that I did like from this list was the dominance of PHP/MySQL based solutions.
Central Arkansas Refresh Meeting
Just a heads up, the Central Arkansas Refresh Group is going to have our second meeting this next week (Tuesday, March 31) at the Starbucks located at 9401 N. Rodney Parham Rd. in Little Rock. The start time is 6:00pm and we expect the meetup to last about 2 hours but with all of the networking that went on last week it’s hard to say what time we all need to tell our families that we will be home. Also, if you haven’t already, please RSVP on the Facebook Event page so we can kind of get an idea for headcount…
Our Facebook group has grown to over 55 members now and continues to grow each week. The group is open to everyone interested, our goal is to have a diverse crowd, here’s a little bit more from our website about the group: (compliments of David Kinkade, who is also promoting the group on his blog)
The Central Arkansas Refresh Group consists of technically minded professionals who make their living on the web — bloggers, software developers, graphic artists, social networking enthusiasts, photographers, videographers, marketing and media gurus, and website owners.
Centered in Little Rock, the Central Arkansas Refresh group launched in February 2009 to serve as a hub for education, networking and the sharing of ideas among like-minded web professionals.
The group is organized around the principles of the Refresh movement:
The Refresh Manifesto
- Let’s Gather Great Minds
- Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
- Let’s All Grow And Learn
- Let’s Promote Local Talent
- Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
- Let’s Make Our Cities Better
Membership is open to all interested web professionals, programmers and new media enthusiasts. Visit our Facebook page now to get involved.
Interested in being a corporate sponsor for the Central Arkansas Refresh Group? Visit our sponsors page for more information.
Facebook | Refresh Group Meeting
