For the third year in a row, Drupal has been nominated for a Packt Publishing Open Source CMS award. Packt Publishing is announcing winners all week. Today they announced the 2008 best PHP 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.

Drupal won this award in both the popular vote and the judges selection. The judges cited improvements to installation, updates, breadth of features in modules, and how Drupal handles errors in these processes. Of special note was Drupal's use of social features and how those features integrate with web content management. Of course the final advantage Drupal had was the "large and hugely supportive community". This award belongs to everyone in the Drupal community for helping each other and particularly new users.

Earlier this week Earl Miles, a.k.a merlinofchaos, was recognized as one of the 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued People for his work on the Drupal project. On Friday, Packt Publishing will announce the overall open source CMS award winner. The Drupal community has a lot of strong competition and we will be working hard to repeat our win of the 2007 best overall open source CMS award.

Comments

dnaromance’s picture

Yahoo!

Congratulation!

I was glad that I'm part of Drupal community!

Hey I've voted it :)

Keep it up Drupaller!

Thanks!

Best regards,
kailoon

drupaloSa’s picture

I'm proud to be a part of such a great community. I hope Drupal will also win the overall award.
---
drupaldersleri.org - Türkçe Drupal bilgi kaynağınız

lacisoft’s picture

I've started to use Drupal recently and i must say i am very pleasantly surprised by its features, ease of use and the speedy module building made possible by this CMS. Congratulations.

Drupal deserves this nomination and the award.

Keep up the good work!

greylogic’s picture

As Always ... Drupal Rocks!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------
My attempt with Drupal - Jaanlo.com

abhinavlal’s picture

Awesome...... Drupal rocks......
I'm pretty sure drupal is goin to win the overall category also....

Abhinav Lal
http://www.livingasabhinav.blogspot.com

vividona’s picture

congratulation and more success

really good news

www.albahala.org

red-pea’s picture

^o^

Congratulation.

Keeping moving

nsmgr8’s picture

For the THIRD YEAR in a row!!!

That's really awesome!

Keep it up Drupal.

Theatre SUST

BioALIEN’s picture

It's the 2nd year winning the top award. The 3rd you're referring to Drupal won 2nd best. Correct me if I'm wrong :)
---
Dee
iScene.eu :: UK Drupal Consultancy

Jānis Bebrītis’s picture

Congratulations for all Drupal`ers out there :)

Thank you all for letting me be with the best of the best.

duntuk’s picture

woohoo... awesome...

caetemh’s picture

wow! Congratulation. =D

James125’s picture

Congratulation! hurray!

Ildar Samit’s picture

gebo-1’s picture

Congratulations for this award to the Drupal team!

I have been looking at many different CMS's lately and found Drupal very easy to install, configure and adjust to my needs.

hanamizuki’s picture

Good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love Drupal!

yched’s picture

Way cool !
Plus, as opposed to last year, "the same CMS can win the Overall and Best PHP/Other Award", so we can keep our fingers crossed for the forthcoming 'Overall' price announcement.

AmyStephen’s picture

Congratulations on another well deserved honor for a community that never stops to rest on your laurels, but instead continues to innovate forward. Respect to all contributors!

manop’s picture

Congratulations!

wimtol’s picture

Congratulations to all. Let's keep up the good work together!

Wim Tol
Ducopro
Netherlands

seutje’s picture

never doubted it for a second ;)

jimjacobs’s picture

This is great to hear. Just another one of the many reasons we're glad to be working with Drupal!

Jim Jacobs
OmniStudio
Washington, DC

Helpermedia’s picture

Congrats!

vkr11’s picture

Great to be part of this community !!

- Victor
Better Way to Search Drupal.org | Drupal Jobs | Income Tax India

vinayras’s picture

Congrats to all members of this wonderful community.

Vinay Yadav
PHP / Drupal Developer
http://www.vinayras.com

www.eDrupal.com - Indian Drupal Community

Bockereyer’s picture

Congratulations to the whole community for getting Drupal to this height. I hope this will push Packt to release much more good Drupal books.

BTW I'm desperately waiting for a book on CCK and Views.

yaph’s picture

Congrats!

--
My Drupal Articles

benoitsmith’s picture

Congratulations ! Keep up the great work !

Chris Charlton’s picture

That's AWESOME! LA Drupal just met last night but we'll let our members know in the notes for the night. Gratz to all involved, serious. :D

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chris Charlton

Download Drupal extensions for Dreamweaver - http://xtnd.us

Chris Charlton
Manager
LA Drupal
Drupal Author
Published since 2007
quaiquynhi’s picture

Well .... Rocky Drupal. Always ahead ! Cheer cheer :)

sumitk’s picture

I just woke up and found my fav. CMS rocking again it feels awesome :D

Drupal rocks!!

sumit kataria
www.sumitk.net

skimmerboi’s picture

Yeah...! Drupal just ate them all.. hahhaa...
Skimmerboi Photography

Feiiiiiii’s picture

congratulations

pztrick’s picture

good job team. [/pep talk]

seakayjay’s picture

I'm not surprise because i'm sure Drupal will win again =)

I've used a number of CMS in my life. Drupal is the best CMS I've ever used. Keep it up Drupal!

Sree’s picture

Drupal rocks!!!!!!

-- Sree --

-- Sree --
IRC Nick: sreeveturi

khanshakeeb’s picture

i have also voted it and i am sure it will be market leader in opensource cms plateform
"long live DRupal " :D

amjadsheikhs’s picture

:) and who is the runner-up?

aerozekiel’s picture

Wow Mabuhay Drupal and drupalers!!!!

philme’s picture

congrats!!

seakayjay’s picture

We'll wait for Overall Open Source CMS Award result. Sure Drupal will win that category as well. =)

Marat’s picture

No surprises, Drupal always alone on the top!

mp’s picture

drupal rocks :)

greets
markus

www.multivitamedia.com
webdesign - graphics - webhosting

72dpi’s picture

Was there any doubt? =)

Congratulations team, keep up the inspiring work....!

Abilnet’s picture

This is just the beginning! Congrats Drupal, developers, supporters and the entire community!

bharanikumariyerphp’s picture

Hi Drupal members

It very nice to hear...

Happy...

god Bless you Drupal

Regards
Bharani

hunt112’s picture

Long Live Drupal and the community! congrats to all !!!

Phillip Mc’s picture

Great to see so many voted for Drupal, but, let's keep our feet on the ground guys. the company behind the competition is a book publishing company who sells "how to" books for Joomla, drupal, wordpress and the rest.

Note how there is a "Winner" in loads of different categories. I spat out my coffee when I saw that the winner in the "Other CMS" category was plone. Not because it was plone...but, because they obviously must have been running out of ideas of what to call the category!

It's a standard online marketing trick, guys.

A competition is launched....Drupal, joomla, plone users are told about it and are told to "go vote on it, now"...the users of each CMS tool start voting like lunatics...not because they know that the tool they are using is the best, but, just to see "their own" team "win", the host of the competition gets a huge amount of promotion (and email addresses via the voting)....and there are enough categories to keep everyone happy!

Drupal users didn't vote for Drupal to win because they believe Drupal is the best. They don't know it's the best. They just voted to see Drupal win. The same goes for joomla, plone, wordpress or whatever the category is. Everyone likes to think that what they're working with is "the best". But I promise you that many people who voted for Drupal have never even tried expression engine, joomla, ruby on rails, e104, wordpress or many others...so they couldn't possibly be in a position to vote on which is best.

Don't get me wrong. Drupal is very good, but, after all the woohooo! posts, I just thought I would inject a reality check into the thread.

OsterD@drupal.org’s picture

Dear Phillip Mc, I can't comment on what you are saying about tricks...
But I can certainly comment on the rest.
So here it goes!!!!
I have being using Drupal nearly 2 years now building my personal and commercial sites.
The question is how did I ended up using Drupal?
Well, one nice day I woke up and on my PC screen I saw "Do you want to know the truth?". I said "Yes". So I took the blue pill and I ended up using Drupal!!!! (Matrix analogy!!!)
Come on let's get serious here.
I used more than 10 open source CMS out there before I ended up with Drupal and not for a month or 2. But for a WHOLE YEAR!!!
If you think that my vote is a vote that is blindly submitted, you should reconsider!!!

I bet more than half of the Drupal community has a similar experience to tell.
So, please don't preach us with these.
Drupal Community does what it does and is what it is because there is THIS BIG difference with us.

And last but not least....
Do you really know what keeps us ahead?
When an excellent feature is developed by another CMS out there that Drupal doesn't have, we incorporate it to Drupal and we say "THANK YOU" to this CMS's community!!!!
Tell me where else you have seen this!!!!

David Oster.

Phillip Mc’s picture

I have being using Drupal nearly 2 years now building my personal and commercial sites......I used more than 10 open source CMS out there before I ended up with Drupal and not for a month or 2. But for a WHOLE YEAR!!!

You're a classic example of the sort of people I'm talking about.

2 years is a long time in tech. A very long time.

The truth is that YOU voted for Drupal because you *THINK* it's the best.....not because you know it is the best CMS out there. Before you voted, you didn't download 10 other leading CMS's, ran some tests, setup some sites and analysed which one is the best. You just voted, because you were told to vote.

Don't get me wrong. I think Drupal is very good too, but, I don't get carried away high-fiving everyone else just because a book publishing company ran a competition and the Drupal community came out a winner in one of the many categories.

You do realise that there are just enough categories to cover almost all of the main CMS's out there?

  • Overall Winner, Open Source CMS Award
  • Most Promising Open Source Content Management System
  • Best Open Source PHP Content Management System>
  • Best Other Open Source Content Management System
  • Open Source MVPs

I imagine if you pop across to the PLONE forum, there will be a similar thread full of lemmings high-fiving each other because they won the "Best Other CMS" category!!!

It's a simple but classic marketing trick, David.

minesota’s picture

Marketing people have to do marketing anyway. I did try 'other' cms scripts in php to a great extent.
I have installations of them in my localhost till now and did test run those on actual servers too.

I am not sure which other scripts were nominated but personally I did try in full width and depth
geeklog
e107 ( did you mean it by e104? )
joomla
wordpress
elgg
xoops
and also tried a dozen others on the demos at opensourcecms site

Somehow despite the hype about Drupal being difficult I find it the most easy except perhaps e107
Feature and performance wise why Drupal clicks for me and others not :

Views and CCK
Blog for every site member out-of-the-box
Blog + Forum + Wiki + Album + Groups ready to run without any tweak or hassle

While Elgg and buddypress (social wordpress) have really good social features Elgg is very 'difficult' indeed and buddypress is not yet ready, and they still do not have something like views,cck, panels etc

I did post for requirements of social modules in e107 and geeklog - e107 has no response while in Geeklog someone from google summercamp proposed some social module which never started so far. Xoops had a good start with social module but things got static. So far as social modules are concerned Drupal is way ahead and really very active and responsive. Its almost amazing.

Regarding Expression Engine many people say its good but I find it difficult to run it out of the box and still not sure how one can have Groups or Communities very simply like OG of Drupal or Groupvibe of Joomla. I think it is also totally not free like Drupal is but I may be wrong on this.

Wordpress is much hyped about the 'blog' aspect but I think the real winner is Invision, which has done a fantastic thing out of blogging recently. But then that is a paid script. Except the ajax part Drupal can do almost all they can do in sync with a few modules.

Except for Joomla and Wordpress I think none other has so much activity and support like Drupal. I do not find joomla very well organized starting from their site design and modules. Drupal has a fantastic organization of the site. I know there has been discussion about usability and handbooks and the like but personally I find all very logically laid out ( except yahoo answers like presentation of the forum, absence of seeing posts on hover and lack of starring threads or issues).

Python and ruby on rails is out of bound for me as I do not understand those.

I wish there were at least two or three more cms scripts which came as close as Drupal to my needs but unfortunately there is none so far.

BryanSD’s picture

Actually Phillip, the reality you're injecting is more opinion than full truth. Obviously, Packt Publishing does get quite a bit of publicity for hosting the award, so I'm not going to argue that marketing isn't involved...because it likely is. In 2006, Packt only had one category which prevented a lot of good non-PHP based CMS due to the limitation of only five finalists. So from my perspective the increase in categories helps ensure smaller (and sometimes better) CMS projects have a better chance to making it to the finalists list where a CMS's popularity counts less.

The "public vote" (reflecting the popular vote) really only impacts the top five CMS nominated as finalists for each category. From there, the public only makes up 25% of the vote for the winner of each category with three other judges sitting on the panel. While the judges can't be completely non-biased, they do a pretty good job judging each CMS on it's own merits. How do I know that? I sat on the 2007 Overall Winner category last year which gave Drupal the number one spot.

This year, I sat on the Most Promising CMS category where I knew little about the CMS involved (except for CMS Made Simple). I can say without bias, SilverStripe's user interface for editing content is ahead of Drupal with regards to usability. I am not a fan of XOOPS, but despite that opinion I also ranked high ImpressCMS (a fork of XOOPS). Drupal didn't get declared to be 2008's best PHP-based CMS because of it's popularity, it got there because the judges determined it is the best in this category. Let's not take from the Drupal community the awards it has earned. There are enough cynics out there as it is.

Bryan Ruby
CMSReport

Phillip Mc’s picture

Don't get me wrong Bryan. I think Drupal is very good. I'm more of a realist than a cynic - the award is valuable to Drupal.

It does helps increase awareness but the driving force behind the award is to sell more books - not to find the best cms. It's a classic trojan horse marketing vehicle and that's not a cynical way to view it, Bryan, it's a factual way of viewing it.

A "Best CMS" competition would not be based on Drupal/Joomla/Whatever users voting for Drupal/Joomla/whatever, it would be based on an independent group of specialists running a series of independent tests and analysis. The problem with that approach is that it won't get thousands of Drupal/joomla/whatever users visiting the pakt site to leave their email address and vote for Drupal/joomla/whatever respectively.

So I totally understand that the incentive for PAKT to sponsor and organise the competition has to be justified, Bryan. But, to forget that all of a sudden and celebrating like we won the lottery is not only embarassing, but, it leads to complaceny.

As an example, just after the award was announced, I downloaded Drupal to see what it might be like for a new user who saw the award announcement and decided to check Drupal out. The first thing I got? an error message on the very first step of the installation procedure because the settings.php file doesn't come with the Drupal download. A user has to create a copy of a default file upload it to their server and change the permissions for it.

That's not quite what someone might expect from an "award winning" tool. Is it?

I suppose my point is that voting Drupal as the "winner" of the award is a good thing, but, let's not get carried away.

Pasqualle’s picture

ScoutBaker’s picture

Of course, reading the documentation for installation would have provided the information needed to not get the error. Award winning does not mean the user has no responsibility to understand how the application is used, or what its requirements are.

Every platform has certain limitations. This includes the systems that Drupal must run on. Instead of complaining about the perceived deficiency in Drupal, why don't you turn your attention to finding a better solution to the problem? If you do, it sounds like everyone will be happy.

---
"Nice to meet you Rose...run for your life." - The Doctor
My first public Drupal site - EyeOnThe503

Phillip Mc’s picture

My point was not to complain about the perceived deficiency of Drupal, it was simply to suggest that we shouldn't get carried away.

You are right, of course, a user does have a responsibility to understand how the application is used, or what it's requirements are but, I'm afraid in this context it's Alice in Wonderland stuff to assume new users will study and read the install.txt in detail prior to giving it a spin. In other words, you're deluding yourself.

Many who have never used Drupal will read or hear about the award, decide to give it a spin to see what it's like. http://drupal.org/node/225880#comment-1016190

In other words, winning the award is a good thing, but, let's not get carried away i.e. Thousands of new Drupal users will be attracted by the award announcement. Let's be intelligent about it and make the most out of the hype.

WorldFallz’s picture

'award winning' encompasses much more than ease of use. It has as much, if not more, to do with with functionality and quality. I can't think of any CMS that has the equivalent functionality of core drupal + ckk + views + panels + nodequeue (not to mention the hundreds of other contrib modules) without writing a single line of code or paying for a single extension. And the quality of code has also been noticed in the media.

There's still a lot of work to be done regarding usability with drupal, no question. And it's encouraging to see it on Dries' radar in such a big way. However, I don't think it's valid to say the award is questionable, which is what 'That's not quite what someone might expect from an "award winning" tool. Is it?' says to me, because users are too lazy to follow the step-by-step instructions in a file called 'INSTALL.txt'. You don't have to 'study' it-- you just have to read it.

Perhaps I would be more likely to agree with your point if the forums weren't littered with "please provide me a step-by-step instruction for installing drupal" posts. That's exactly what the INSTALL.txt file is. If people are too lazy to open the INSTALL.txt file they'll just find something else to be lazy about when the install process is 'perfect'.

===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz

OsterD@drupal.org’s picture

Well done people!!!
Drupal deserves this award. Without trying to undermine the other CMS's, my personal view is that Drupal is well ahead of the others.
Let's keep it like this and make sure it advances even more.

David Oster
A committed Drupaler!!!
http://www.odphotography.com

drupalhook’s picture

Hi
I am excited knowing that our drupal got best cms award.
Great job...finally we got the best award for our hard labour.

Keep it up guys..

Thanks
AB

aurelien-bordeaux’s picture

That is good news. Where will Drupal stop?
The problem sometimes with drupal is that it allows you so many things, that you always want more and more...

But as an NY italian friend use to tell me : "that is not the problem budy, that's the solution".. :)

DrupalDummy-1’s picture

Congratulations...to whom?

We, the community, are Drupal.
So, let us congratulate ourselves!

bastaj’s picture

I'm contratulating to Drupal community.
The CMS Drupal is the best CMS which I have ever use.

Good luck.
Jiri

kamleshpatidar’s picture

Congrats,
i proud to be a drupalian.

Kamlesh patidar

dropcube’s picture

Awesome! congratulations to all the community!!!

chrisroditis’s picture

I am truly proud of working with Drupal the past 3,5 years, and now that it gets the recognition it deserves I feel that my choice of CMS back then was right on spot! Thanks community!
Christopher Skauss:my personal blog

A healthy disregard for the impossible.

kulfi’s picture

Great (but unsurprising) news! When will the overall winner be announced?

free2456f’s picture

Congratulation!
Congratulation! Congratulation!
Congratulation! Congratulation! Congratulation!

fhik2k’s picture

I'm new here and it comes up that is a right choice

In Code We Trust

trinhtienhai’s picture

Great , viva drupal !!!
Sẽ có nhiều người phải ngã xuống để đế chế này đứng lên !!!

Kuldip Gohil’s picture

[ Congrats and Best Luck For the 2009 Awards! ]

--
Kuldip Gohil

darrenlambert’s picture

Superb! Well done everyone. Drupal 6 is really starting to beat off the competition now :)

Baraka
Camper Vans

themegarden.org’s picture

Congratulations to all contributors and the whole drupal community!

---
Drupal Theme Garden

jcnventura’s picture

This year we made the double:

Winner of the 2008 Overall Open Source CMS and
2008 Best Open Source PHP CMS Awards

Well done, Drupal developers and community in general!

--------------

João Ventura
Venturas.org

João Ventura
Venturas.org

hectorplus’s picture

Go Drupal Go! I made a good decision for adoption Drupal.

Amigopost.com

Random posts by Hector M.

Markwebuk’s picture

Two awards in a row.

Congrats to all members of the Drupal community.

Drupal Hosting | VPS Hosting | Dedicated Server

Marc Bijl’s picture

...one giant leap for Content Management! ;)

___________________
discover new oceans
lose sight of the shore

JohnLinux’s picture

Hongera=Congrats in Swahili (African Language) I'm proud that my vote counted too and I'm part of a great world

--
www.whereis.co.ke

toma’s picture

Congratulation to Drupal community, really i am glad to be a part of the drupal community
---

Morocco

afrodesia’s picture

a great CMS deserves this award, and thats what drupal is...congrates

http://www.afrodesia.com/

armymason’s picture

Congrats to Drupal. When it does well those who support it and use it also win. I am a novice at this but I have read and watched many tips on features of Drupal. Things are moving at a moderate pace. I am actually glad that I don't get all of the complexity right away that ensures me that there is greater potential than I am utilizing.

Congrats again and keep up the good work.

My first Drupal page attempt -- www.masonmr.com (Long Live Small Business)

eric.chenchao’s picture

WoW!!! That's super, congratulations!!!

dealancer’s picture

THANKS FOR DEVELOPER'S TEAM!!!!!!!!!!

If you are going to commit my patches, please use a following authorship info as my previous username was `vackar` on drupal.org and it is still used in the D.O. Git system:

--author="vackar <vackar@243418.no-reply.drupal.org

davidwhthomas’s picture

It's official, Drupal is awesome!

badabing’s picture

U guys deserve it! Concrats. !

lapantz4less’s picture

mimosa2002’s picture

Congratulation!!!

JayNL’s picture

(Y)
-= JMstudio.nl Web Development =-

socialtalker’s picture

JUST KIDDING!
I Luvs me some Drupal! congrats to all the mr/ms smartypants that created it.

suryaden’s picture

great, i'm so lucky found drupal cms, which i have to try, try ... but this is the great code
cheers..

matteoraggi’s picture

All the best for this great social cms! the best for now and i hope atleast 100 of these years!

Luxury Furniture
http://www.luxury-furniture.biz

3lite’s picture

I keep telling people that Drupal is the best CMS... now I can just show them one little picture ;]

___________________
Washington Pages
Blank My Blank - Promote your _____!

Fred125’s picture

Congratulation!