If you are a consistent reader of Hiveminds Magazine then you probably noticed that about three months ago I changed the direction of the site to include only the top three PHP open source content management systems. At the time the choice was made on an assesment based on my personal findings and some guessing using Google trends as a yard stick. It's nice to find out now that Water & Stone support the choices I made in a new survey.

Water & Stone released their survey of market share in the open source content management system market. The survey shows that three systems lead the race: WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. The survey concludes that these three systems have opened up a large lead on the rest of the pack to become the dominant brands in the market. It is not very important which of these systems becomes the top dog. It is probably more important to consider how they became one of the top three open source CMS of choice.

The author, Ric Shreves, states:

WordPress enjoys great brand strength courtesy of two complimentary offerings: the WordPress CMS and the WordPress hosted blogging service. Nonetheless Joomla! is positioned to challenge for the lead in brand awareness" He added, "Though it might be surprising to some, Drupal is not far behind. The survey showed that in the crucial U.S. market, Drupal is essentially tied with Joomla"

There is a lot of evangelicalism associated with the relative popularity of the many open source content management systems and debate on the strengths and weakness of them is always something that is readily the point of heated discussion. To make informed decisions about product selection businesses and private persons want to know just which projects are leading the race for popularity. Because of the fluid nature of the internet and how website software works there is never one clear winner and no one really wants a winner as this would probably bring the competition to a halt. But there are many that want to know just what to base their decisions on when choosing a CMS. It is very hard to get the individual projects to dismiss their biases and come to a conclusion as a group. Even less of a chance of this happening using user opinion polls.

In an effort to address this issue, Water & Stone has compiled the first thorough survey into market share of the open source CMS market. The survey analyzes 19 of the most prominent systems, assessing each on a wide variety of traditional and Web 2.0 measures. The emphasis of the study is determining who leads rate of adoption and who are the brand leaders.

While Drupal, Joomla! and Wordpress lead across a wide-range of the measured parameters, the survey also identified Elgg and MODx as being on the rise. The survey displays some clear indicators for many projects that are at risk of falling from grace. The survey will do a lot to help project managers and contributors in making improvements.

A complimentary copy of the survey can be downloaded from the water&stone site, at waterandstone.com CMS Market Survey PDF

Happy Publishing!

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