Articles - Page 258

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

Another year of the Packt Publishing Open Source CMS Awards is upon us and we want to know who you are voting for this year.
Which CMS’ do you feel is most deserving of these awards?
Categories for this year remain the same and you can still get in your nominations using the below links:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/nominate-overall-open-source-cms-award-winner" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Best Overall Open Source CMS</a><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/nominate-most-promising-open-source-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/nominate-most-promising-open-source-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Most Promising Open Source CMS</a><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/nominate-best-open-source-php-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/nominate-best-open-source-php-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Best PHP Open Source CMS</a><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/best-other-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.packtpub.com/best-other-cms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Best Other Open Source CMS</a></li>
</ul>
Nominations close September 11th so you better get your recommendations in quick if your favorite isn’t listed.
August 3 | Nominations Open
September 11 | Nominations Close
September 21 | Voting Begins
October 30 | Voting Ends
November 9 | Winners Announced
Here’s a breakdown of the potential prizes:
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>Overall </td>
<td>Most Promising</td>
<td>Best PHP</td>
<td>Best Other</td>
<td>Hall of Fame</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Winner</td>
<td>$4,000</td>
<td>$2,000</td>
<td>$2,000</td>
<td>$2,000</td>
<td>$4,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>First Runner Up</td>
<td>$2,500</td>
<td>$1,000</td>
<td>$500</td>
<td>$500</td>
<td>$2,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Second Runner Up</td>
<td>$1,500</td>
<td>$1,000</td>
<td>$500</td>
<td>$500</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Get your votes and nominations in by visiting: <a href="http://www.packtpub.com/award" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.packtpub.com/award</a>

Who are you voting for in the CMS Awards?

mike-johnston

KnowledgeTree®, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provider focusing on affordable document management software that is easily installed and used by business professionals, today announced the release of a developer snapshot of its product that includes an implementation of the draft Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification.
This snapshot is available for testing in the community. CMIS clients, such as CMIS Spaces, will work with the KnowledgeTree CMIS interface and allow users to access content as they would with any other CMIS interface implementation.
The CMIS initiative is led by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), which drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets and protect the right of free choice of technology. KnowledgeTree is a sponsoring member of OASIS.
“KnowledgeTree is being proactive in adopting and integrating CMIS into our product suite,” said Philip Arkcoll, product manager, KnowledgeTree. “This will allow users of ECM products to extend their software investments by gaining visibility into all enterprise document repositories that have a CMIS interface as well as realize benefits such as reduced vendor lock-in, improved interoperability between content management systems, and a richer content management ecosystem.”
In addition to the CMIS API, KnowledgeTree is also releasing a proof-of-concept CMIS client module to the Drupal web content management application community. This module demonstrates accessing content in the KnowledgeTree repository from the popular web content management server.
The KnowledgeTree CMIS module is built on the core CMIS module, maintained by Optaros. Practice Director of ECM for Optaros, Jeff Potts, said “I've worked directly with implementations of other standards for various purposes and have long been a fan of standardized communication mechanisms allowing people to share their data without having to worry about format conversions and communication issues. We’re pleased to see other organizations like KnowledgeTree that are passionate about open standards.”
<h4>About KnowledgeTree</h4>
KnowledgeTree is an enterprise content management provider focusing on affordable document management software that is easily installed and used by business professionals. Offering commercial SaaS and on-site editions as well as a free, open-source community edition, KnowledgeTree’s features — including workflow, version control and audit trails — help organizations manage the document lifecycle, promote collaboration, reduce paper and ensure compliance.
As a commercial open source company, KnowledgeTree is committed to affordability, accessibility, and integration across operating systems and applications. Customers include organizations of all sizes in many industries, including life sciences, legal, financial, and government sectors.  KnowledgeTree is headquartered in Raleigh, NC.
For more information, visit <a href="http://www.knowledgetree.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.knowledgetree.com</a>.

Enterprise Content Management Provider KnowledgeTree® Incorporates OASIS CMIS Interface

The developers of dotCMS have introduced a new scripting plugin that brings a number of new integration possibilities to the popular content management system. With the introduction of this plugin, it is now possible to use Ruby, Python, PHP, Groovy and Javascript.
Here are some additional details about this new development:
The plugin is designed to allow developers who are familiar with other scripting languages to build dynamic, content driven web pages and applications and manage them through the dotCMS interface. Scripting developers can have access to the dotCMS content repository through standard contentAPIs and mix and mashup scripting and content in their applications.
“It is really the best of both worlds”, say Jason Tesser, a lead developer for dotCMS and authors of the plugin. “It allows content owners to manage content within a structured, enterprise class CMS and web developers to leverage what they already know to build rich content driven applications.”
“Long story short, I just deployed a complete php app – pastebin (www.pastebin.com) – via webDAV into dotCMS. It is permissioned, versioned, managed and served in dotCMS. Now that is just cool.”
While considered beta code, the scripting plugin is extremely usable. To learn more about the plugin, visit dotCMS.org. Additionally, there are two blog posts that describe how to get started with the plugin.
Scripting, meet dotCMS: <a href="http://www.dotcms.org/blog/detail.dot?id=180896&amp;blogId=142480" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.dotcms.org/blog/detail.dot?id=180896&amp;blogId=142480</a>
dotCMS runs PHP: <a href="http://www.dotcms.org/blog/detail.dot?id=180946&amp;blogId=142480" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.dotcms.org/blog/detail.dot?id=180946&amp;blogId=142480</a>

dotCMS introduces new scripting plugin that allows use of Ruby, Python, PHP, Groovy and JavaScript

The AxCMS.net team have provided us with a video showcasing their internal version 9 alpha release. For those unfamiliar with the product, AxCMS.net is known as a powerful enterprise web content management system.
With separated systems for managing content and a second (or more in load balanced scenarios) for the productive environment and with the possibility to extend the system and integrate other databases, products, business logic, and much more AxCMS.net is often recommended for midsize and big projects.
According to the AxCMS team: “With version 9 we focused on the user interaction between editor and content. Our main goal is to improve the handling and to shorten the time to a minimum for generating and editing content. in the first webcast we show you how to handle text and images in version 9 of AxCMS.net.”
For more info on this product and other releases, see <a href="http://help.axcms.net/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AxCMS.net</a>

AxCMS.net 9 alpha video showcases new features expected in next release

Open Text™ Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC), a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), today announced that it has completed the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of Vignette Corporation (NASDAQ: VIGN). The acquisition has now received approval by Vignette’s stockholders.
With its acquisition of Vignette now complete, Open Text said today that it is laying the strategic groundwork that will further its position as the independent leader in ECM, with a comprehensive portfolio of Web solutions to meet the broad range of market requirements.
Open Text will continue to support Vignette’s products and installed base, including users of previous versions of Vignette Content Management, as well as Open Text’s existing Web Solutions products. The combined product line will provide users with a full set of feature options, from an easy-to-use, fast-to-deploy web publishing application, to a fully integrated, enterprise-class e-business platform for large-scale deployments.
“The new demands of social and digital media, and fast-growing user expectations for more personalized Web interactions are placing enormous pressures on customers to keep up,” said John Shackleton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Open Text. “This is an important area of innovation for us going forward as we expand our ECM portfolio – Vignette will play a key role in this strategy.
“We are making a strong commitment of support to our WCM customers and, at the same time, taking advantage of an opportunity to broaden our WCM capabilities to address a much wider range of needs in the market. Vignette expands our capabilities to meet the evolving needs of organizations to deliver compelling, interactive sites that drive e-business, customer loyalty and lead generation.  We gain important capabilities that expand our leadership in WCM and complement our current range of products in this space.”
According to Shackleton, Open Text also sees opportunities to leverage other key components of Vignette’s product portfolio within the Open Text ECM Suite. Open Text will announce more details on product strategy in the weeks ahead, and will roll out a detailed product roadmap to include Vignette products at its annual Content World 2009 Conference, in October (<a href="http://www.opentext.com/contentworld/2009" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.opentext.com/contentworld/2009</a>). In addition to technology and expanded market leadership, Open Text gains other benefits from the deal: Open Text adds Vignette’s experienced WCM professionals to the Open Text team, and Vignette supplements Open Text’s global reach and already strong presence in key markets worldwide.
On the Vignette side, Vignette customers will benefit from Open Text’s expanded ECM solutions portfolio, Open Text’s strategic partnerships and integrations with major enterprise players such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, and the support of the world’s largest independent ECM solutions provider.
Merger Agreement Pursuant to the terms of the Merger Agreement, each outstanding share of Vignette common stock was converted into the right to receive $8.00 in cash, without interest and 0.1447 shares of Open Text common stock. Open Text will issue approximately 3.45 million shares of its common stock in connection with the Merger. Based on the closing price of $36.84 per share of Open Text common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on July 20, 2009, the last trading day before the closing of the Merger, the aggregate value of the consideration paid in connection with the Merger was approximately $321 million.
Open Text expects to incur restructuring charges associated with this merger and will disclose, on Monday July 27, 2009,  estimates of the range of amounts expected to be incurred in connection with the restructuring initiative in a Form 8-K filing. Management will provide further information regarding the future plans and prospects of the combined company when it provides fiscal year-end results on August 20, 2009.

Open Text completes Vignette Acquisition

We're all well aware that micro blogging has taken the ‘net by storm lately with the introduction of Twitter and similar services.
There are also now appliances (<a href="http://www.socialtext.com/blog/2009/07/microblogging-intranet.html">Microblogging Appliance Delivers a Twitter for your Intranet)</a> that have been created in order to help expand micro-blogging into the corporate environment.  It's also well known that people already use acronyms, mis-spellings, word replacements and other means to communicate without using the actual correct language itself.
This has led us to wonder if perhaps micro blogging and other similar tools such as instant messaging have begun to lead to an even further degradation of the human language.  Is this the case or are we simple evolving speech wise?
Slang seems to be becoming more prevalent today then it once was. So much so, in fact, that we sometimes notice slang terms being used in business meetings as if they were actual dictionary words.

Is Micro-blogging degrading the English language?

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

#ffffff

This is our list of Preferred Joomla Template Resources.
These are companies we've dealt with or have had positive experiences with and are willing to recommend.
Sometimes it can be tough weeding through the spam sites and the sites with repeat content so we thought we'd give our s up to a few.
<a href="http://www.joomlashack.com">Joomlashack</a>
Joomlashack is one of the most popular theme sites that provides  free and premium themes for various versions of Joomla.
They also have a number of extensions and learning resources available.
<a href="http://www.yootheme.com">YOOtheme</a>
YOOtheme is a premium theme provider, they offer a number of themes with monthly releases as well as some other tools such as Zoo (a catalog system for Joomla) and some extensions.
<a href="http://www.rockettheme.com">RocketTheme</a>
Another theme site that provides some great extensions, free and premium Joomla templates. Rockettheme does monthly releases typically on the first of each month.
<a href="http://www.gavick.com">Gavick</a>
Joomla template club featuring a number of unique templates. Also a few extensions available.
<a href="http://www.joomlart.com">Joomlart</a>
Joomla template site that offers both a template club and an extension club. They also have a pretty decent tutorials section.
<a href="http://www.youjoomla.com">YouJoomla</a>
YouJoomla is a provider of various templates and extensions via their template club.

Our Top Six Favourite Joomla Template Providers

We came across a very interesting little CMS that we thought we'd share with you via a quick Perch CMS Review. When it says it's a really simple CMS it's not kidding.
If you've ever played with the likes of <a href="/cushycms-review/">CushyCMS</a> or other similar products that allow you to add tags to existing pages which in turn enables them to be editable by the interface, then you'll feel right at home with Perch.
The difference, however, is that Perch is available for download and can be hosted on your own network as opposed to being hosted on someone elses.
Perch is not free but is available for £35 and there are no other fees after this.
Here is a <a href="http://media.grabaperch.com/video/perch_intro.flv">video</a> that showcases the product.
It's quite easy to use and doesn't take much to set up. You can create your own demo install to try it out if you like. Here are some screenshots from a demo we created to help introduce you to the product.
You can filter your content by type using some handy menus on the left.
It's a nice small product for a reasonable price and if you are looking for something simple and effective to allow you clients to have an easy way to manage their sites, this might be a good option to consider.
You can learn more at<a href="http://grabaperch.com"> http://grabaperch.com</a>

A Quick Perch CMS Review

In an effort to make things easier for those searching for resources for Drupal, we decided to put together a list of known resources broken down by category.
Hopefully this will provide a solid starting point for future Drupal users.
When it comes to Drupal Theme sites there are quite a few that haven't updated in ages and show the same themes that Drupal.org lists in hopes of gaining traffic. We will do our best to exclude those ones here in order to prevent you from having to waste your time seeing the same stuff over and over again.
<h4>Drupal Themes – Free</h4>
<a href="http://drupal.org/project/Themes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal.org Themes Section</a> This section is updated regularly with new theme submissions.
<a href="http://www.templatemonster.com/free-drupal-themes.php" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TemplateMonster</a> A small selection of free drupal offerings.
<a href="http://www.siteground.com/drupal-hosting/drupal-themes.htm" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Siteground – Drupal Themes</a> Siteground has a few original drupal themes for download.
<a href="http://www.freecmstemplates.com/drupal.php" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Free CMS Templates</a> Has 5 or 6 free drupal templates for download.
<a href="http://www.drupalmaster.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Master</a> A reasonable selection of around 10 or so drupal themes.
<a href="http://13jupiters.com/free-drupal-themes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">13jupiters</a> Two free Drupal 5.x themes
<h4>Drupal Themes – Commercial</h4>
<a href="http://TopNotchThemes.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TopNotchThemes.com – Commercial Drupal Themes </a>A nice collection of Drupal Themes. They are all commercial and a bit on the expensive side but still quite nice.
<a href="http://worthapost.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Worthapost </a>Has a nice selection of Commercial Drupal themes. Good for magazine/news sites.
<a href="http://themeshark.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Themeshark</a> Some commercial drupal themes. Some of the colors are pretty ghastly but hey, take what you can get right?
<a href="http://www.osskins.com/main/category/drupal/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OSSkins</a> 1 or 2 free themes mixed in with their collection of commercial offerings.
<a href="http://www.artisteer.com/?p=home" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Artisteer Drupal Theme Generator</a> A theme generator for Drupal
<a href="http://www.itemplater.com/drupalthemes" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">iTemplater</a> A very nice collection of reasonably priced Drupal themes.
<a href="http://www.cmslounge.com/templates/drupal-6-themes.html" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CMS Lounge</a> Another nice collection of well priced Drupal themes.
<a href="http://fordrupal.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">forDrupal</a> Currently only has a single premium theme but it's a nice one. Here's hoping they expand and do more.
<h4>Drupal Resources</h4>
<a href="http://gotdrupal.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">GotDrupal</a> Tons of excellent Drupal Videos. One of the best resources out there.
<a href="http://lullabot.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lullabot</a> Probably the single most well known group of Drupal developers other than the core team themselves. Tons of great resources and articles on their site as well.
<a href="http://acquia.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Acquia</a> Home of the commercial distribution of Drupal and a number of resources and addons.
<a href="http://www.drupaldude.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Dude</a> A good site with a number of articles and videos.
<a href="http://drupaldojo.com/" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Drupal Dojo</a> A number of screencasts to help Drupalers.
<a href="http://learnbythedrop.com" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Learn by the Drop</a> A place to learn Drupal
Do you have others that should be added? Let us know in the comments below and we ‘ll take a look.

Drupal Theme Sites and Drupal Resources List

<a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Feed.Us</a> is new and unique way of pulling and publishing RSS feeds from various sources to anywhere. It functions on tons of platforms and essentially works by pre-caching the RSS feed to a local file and then displaying it as needed.
We took some time to sit down with <a href="http://feed.us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rick Stratton</a>, founder of the project and get into the nitty gritty details.
CC: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
RS: I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After college (1995), I worked for NBC and the USA Today in Washington DC on early web-related ventures. Eventually landed a job as a webmaster for a large outdoor company and started building some basic web publishing applications.
Which lead to a dotcom in 1999, Guitar.com.
We put together what could be called a social networking site for musicians. I helped create our own CMS, on the design side. When that company fell on hard times, we bought a copy of the software and started a company to do web projects for newspapers. That was called 1871 Media.
1871 Media sold in 2007 to a company called uxCast.com. 1871 was fine, but it wasn't great. Our main problem was that we were building, designing websites and then also building/managing a CMS for those sites. We realized we couldn't do either very well. That's how we started thinking about Feed.Us.
CC: Now, you mentioned that 1871 sold to uxCast.com in '07. What is your current role within that firm?
RS: Once we sold, I went on my own for Feed.Us. Our CTO of Feed.Us was also the CTO of 1871 Media.
CC: What was the initial idea behind the concept for Feed.Us? Something must have triggered you to purchase the domain.. what was your first idea for use?
RS: I'm not a developer and when we had projects at 1871 that were small and quick, I used to hack some stuff together using RSS feeds and javascript. It dawned on me that a very light weight CMS that created feeds could be used to make websites very quickly.
And again, we always thought that the CMS at 1871 Media limited the design and construction of the websites. We realized early on that the CMS could be and should be separated from the structure of the website. I was basically “feeding” content to websites. That was the main impetus of Feed.Us.
Plus the domain name was for resale for $300.
CC: In a previous interview of yours, you mentioned that your partner basically dreamed up the idea of the current Feed.Us Model.. perhaps you can take us through that?
RS: The first version of Feed.us basically used a javascript widget and some CSS to put content on “outside” (not hosted by us) websites. There are a number of problems with this, but the biggest is that google can't see content within a javascript. It's a dealbreaker. But John Welborn, our CTO, had a dream about using a caching system as a way to download content to a local file.
And our “FeedUs Grabber” system was born. It loads content into webpages via one local file and two lines of code.
CC: For the less technical, can you give us an example of how this may be used on a traditional website.
RS: Feed.Us is built to work with CSS and will work on PHP or ASP or ASP.net or even Ruby on Rails. So you don't need to download and install the CMS software. You build a site in CSS and then make it into PHP, for example. Then just upload one Feed.Us file on your server.
Then within Feed.Us, we have a series of drop downs that allow you to create two lines of code that can be copied/pasted into your php files. That code will then pull in the dynamic content.
CSS is great to work with. It's so easy to read. You don't need to learn a new process or a new system. Also there's nothing to download/unpack/install/update.
CC: Do you have a live example somewhere of an implementation?
RS: It works nicely as a CMS, but the customers that we're going to have are probably going to use us for syndication rather than CMS. One site in particular, <a href="http://www.winetweets.com/">www.winetweets.com</a> is a good example because it's a Twitter “bot” website and it's built in php and uses some custom code to download tweets from Twitter. But it uses Feed.Us just for one area of content management.
CC: How do you plan to make money from Feed.Us? What is your business model?
RS: We're about to launch. Feed.Us will have a free, simple component. Then we'll have three pay plans that will be signup and pay us monthly. Plans will depend on demand and storage and cost between $25-$100 per month. But we'll sell a customized version of Feed.Us that will be more expensive. With Feed.Us, someone could make their own private label niche CMS or someone could syndicate all their content to other websites via our system.
We're working on a few projects for large publishers where we import their content from RSS or XML and then they can provide that content to their partner websites via javascript widget or serverside widget. Then these publishers can publish and control content on 100s or 1000s of websites very easily, and put ads on those sites as well. I think that is where we will make a business, rather than trying to compete with all the other great CMSes.
CC: When is the launch date scheduled for ?
RS: We're past our deadline. Which is mainly my fault because I keep moving the goalposts. Our updated version is due to all of our current, beta customers next week. Then we need to finish all the help stuff we can and get the payment system finished.
Meanwhile we've been adding ‘beta' customers and working on projects… so we're like partially launched. I don't want people to sign up and be frustrated. I want it to work really well when people signup on their own. That's the key.
CC: Any major players on board yet or still working on that?
RS: Not officially. But we've got two large newspapers demoing right now. But if anyone is interested, they can contact me and we'll put them through a demo and help setup the project if they want/need it!
We have 12 paying customers. And Feed.Us is working on over 100 sites now.
CC: What separates feed.us from something like just importing rss feeds using wordpress plugins?
RS: There are plugins for Drupal and for WordPress that probably do similar stuff but you can't put that stuff anywhere – it has to installed, then setup and the site has to have wordpress. Feed.Us will work on any site. It'll work within other CMSes
CC: I assume speed wise it performs well?
RS: Speed wise, we think it's superior. My partner/CTO has built some huge sites, so we have a lot of experience. But the key is that it is completely cached and it's just CSS and a local text file. There's no database running locally, etc.
CC: If someone wants to get a hold of you or is interested in the project, how can they do so?
RS: email – rick@feed.us
CC: Thanks for your time, Rick. We look forward to talking again in the future.
RS: Thanks Mike.

Feed.Us - An Introduction and an Interview with Rick Stratton

Today marked the day of the very first “Ultimate Showdown of Content Management Systems” which occurred at <a href="http://sxsw.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">South by Southwest Interactive</a>.
This event was an attempt to pit open source content management systems against each other in an effort to determine which one was the greatest. With a presentation style reminiscent of Iron Chef, the popular Cooking television show.. Open Source CMS leaders <a href="http://joomla.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joomla</a>, <a href="http://wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WordPress </a>and <a href="http://drupal.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Drupal</a> were pitted against one another.
The goal? To design the same website in each system and have the audience decide which one was the clear winner.
The websites which were created are available for viewing at: <a href="http://drupalshowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Drupalshowdown.com</a> ; <a href="http://wpshowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WPShowdown.com</a> and <a href="http://joomlashowdown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joomlashowdown.com</a> respectively.
The unique part of this even wasn’t just the myriad of developers all fighting to do the best job possible, but that almost the entire event was covered on Twitter. The hashtag of choice? #cmsshowdown.
When it came time to ask the audience to pick a winner, there was a resounding ‘No’ and they decided that they wanted to learn more about all three projects before determining the winner. So who wins the CMS Show Down?
The answer is simple:
You do.
In the spirit of Open Source and friendly competition.. all three teams came together to remind us why we all love these projects and why they are icons for the industry. Working together, these groups created some amazing sites showcasing their respective systems in a very short time, with a lot of camraderie and a whole lot of fun!

#CMSShowdown: Ultimate Showdown of Content Management Systems

Joomla! is a popular Content Management System (CMS) with numerous followers. Just like any good system it has it's share of good and bad points.
The Bad
Issue #1: Poor out of the box SEO. 
This is likely going to get people riled up but for a system that has as much notoriety and popularity on the market today, it's simply not acceptable to have such poor out of the box SEO. Joomla's URLs, even with their “Search Engine Friendly URLs” option enabled, are still poorly optimized.
Take a look at other products such as Elxis and see the difference. Elxis has incorporated an extreme amount of SEO optimization and is similar in a large number of ways to Joomla!. The difference? Joomla! has the press whereas Elxis does not, even thought it's deserving of it.
Case in point… <a href="http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/3778/details" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this patch</a> has been available since January 26, 2008 and has continually been updated for each version which indicates to us that the Joomla! team obviously isn't too concerned with fixing the issue it addresses. This is something that should have been included immediately in the next release.
Issue #2: Vulnerability causing plugins.
There are too many poorly written extensions that can cause massive vulnerabilities in the system. A prime example of this is this forum: <a href="http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=296&amp;start=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=296&amp;start=0</a> which has been put in place to specifically address security vulnerabilities brought on by third party extensions. Is this the fault of the system? No. It is however, a concern. Perhaps the <a href="http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&amp;t=356189&amp;start=30" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">change to the JED that is happening in June</a> will help address some of these issues.
Issue #3: Lack of Representation
If we ask you who the person is behind WordPress, you'll likely know that it is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wordpress-cms-founder-matt-mullenweg-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Matt Mullenweg</a>. If we ask the same of Drupal, you'll likely know <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/drupal-founder-dries-buytaert-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dries Buytaert</a> is the man. If we ask you who is behind Joomla!, we'll likely get a blank stare.
This may come across as nitpicking to some of you but realize that proper representation can have huge impacts on the success and growth of a product. Matt and Dries combined have done wonderful things for their respective CMS projects whereas if you try to reach someone to comment about Joomla!, you'll have a hard time doing so. Representation is simply poor. Three times, for example, we have attempted to contact members of the Joomla! team for interviews. Have we had any replies? Not one. Yet we've had excellent response from every other CMS project we've reached out to.
In fact, if you are a Press or Marketing person and want to reach that specific area of the Joomla! team.. you will not find a single link on their <a href="http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">About</a> page pointing you in the right direction. Yet, smaller projects with very little notoriety make that effort to at least have an email that is staffed and checked on occassion.
Issue #4: Ease of Use
Joomla! simply isn't an easy system to use. The menus are still complicated and poorly labelled for new users, and publishing a simple article is still harder than it needs to be. Go ahead and install Joomla, you may find it installs fine and then when you go to install a module, plugin or template it will fail. You'll just get a “Warning! Failed to move file.” message. If you don't look under the Help-&gt;System Info-&gt;Directory Permissions menu you'll never find the solution is a permissions issue. They really need to move this and/or make it more visible.
Issue #5: Component, Modules, Plugins oh my!
Someone please tell us why we need 3 different names for extensions and why we can't simply have them all identified as plugins? We realize they each serve different purposes, but talk about confusing the heck out of a new user. That is all.
The Good
Positive #1: Joomla! has done a wonder for the Open Source CMS community
There is no question that Joomla has given the open source community a huge boost when it comes to notoriety. Joomla! is an enormously popular platform and one of the top searches on Google when it comes to Content Management Systems. Without it, we doubt there would be anywhere near as much activity in the industry.
Positive #2: Best Templates on the ‘Net
There is no doubt that Joomla! has some of the nicest and most attractive and diverse themes available on the net for any content management platform. Don't believe us? Check out some of the beautiful designs by <a href="http://Rockettheme.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rockettheme.com</a> or <a href="http://joomlashack.com">Joomlashack.com</a>
Positive #3: There's money to be made in the Joomla! world.
Due to the extreme size of the community and the number of users actively using Joomla, a good company with solid plugins or themes can easily step in and make some good revenue. Companies that specialize in providing solutions for Joomla! are already seeing the rewards of supporting something with this many followers. Theme clubs do very well and even commercial templates have a large number of sales.
Positive #4: Diversity
Joomla! has one of the most diverse communities with a huge following and tons of user groups in various countries donating their time and efforts to improving the platform. Our hope is that with this huge number of followers, some of the issues we addressed above can be handled and brought to the forefront to improve this system and make it more user friendly.
Positive #5: Award Winning
Joomla! has done well for itself and won many awards since it's formation and continues to gain more and more publicity in the marketplace. Packt Publishing has recognized it numerous times and continues to shed light on this great CMS.
Conclusion:
We would like to see Joomla! get to the point of being more user friendly and having a more organized approach to addressing some of these long standing concerns. It's a CMS that is here to stay and has certainly earned it's notoriety but there are still plenty of things that can be done to make it even better.
We're sure there are many people reading this who either agree or disagree. We don't claim to be Joomla! experts but these are concerns we've seen in the system and we'd be happy to hear your solutions.

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