2007 Open Source CMS Nominees

Packt Publishing has announced the nominees in open source CMS toppers for 2007. You can vote for the CMS of your choice by clicking on it. The voting closes on October 26.

However, I failed to grab the context and meaning of categories. Do the categories help? They have not helped me. Going by what I understand of a CMS and what I look for in a CMS, here is the list of my favorite CMSs, in no specific order.

• Drupal
• eZ publish (not in the nominees list)
• WordPress
• CMS Made Simple

I like Joomla and I continue to track it, but I feel that its focus on only simplicity has restricted its flexibility. For example, the section based categorization is a bit restrictive than what Drupal and WordPress offer. This restriction imposes and specific perception, it is difficult to mould into something else. However, it definitely scores higher in simplicity.

Admittedly, even WordPress is a blogging specific CMS, as it is usually more effort to create multiple content types in there. It still applies to many non-blog websites, because of its flexibility and powerful template system. In the new versions it has better categorization, and seems to be similar to that of Drupal. Another CMS which offers unique set of features is Apache Lenya.

Suprisingly I hardly think of CMSs while developing in Python, it is usually the frameworks. Even in PHP, frameworks like CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symfony and Picora make a strong statement. I think we need a frameworks shootout too.

As always, I feel that more than the final winner, this list of nominees is more valuable for someone looking or CMSs. There is another list, if you are looking for more.