BlogsWeek.com

What happened during 2006 in the CMS world? Let’s take a look at our Most visited CMS site stat, based on Alexa traffic rankings, to get a few hints.

The first place in this popularity contest has been held by WordPress during most of 2006, but in the last few weeks Joomla! has taken the top spot, albeit by a slight margin. WordPress released its 2.0 version on December 31, 2005, and has not published a major release during 2006.

On the other side, Joomla! 2006 performance has been impressive. This CMS, started in August 2005 by the Mambo core team using the Mambo codebase, has steadily climbed the popularity ladder in little more than a year. In October 2006 Joomla! has made available its 1.5 beta release.

The third top contender is Drupal. Drupal released its 4.7 version in May 2006 and its 5.0 RC1 in December, and has consistently hovered around the third place during the whole year.

The fourth place is currently held by Movable Type, who released 3.3 in July, but whose popularity has been declining a little during this year; and the fifth place belongs to Xoops, who appears to be followed by a steady audience.

Mambo occupies the sixth place. After the 2005 split with Joomla!, Mambo popularity has suffered a little, and the release of version 4.6 has not helped much to contrast this trend.

In the seventh spot we find ExpressionEngine, another CMS with a constant and loyal audience; ExpressionEngine has released version 1.5 in September. ExpressionEngine, like Movable Type, is a commercial tool, but both offer a free version as well.

And, last but not least, the eighth place is conquered by Pligg. Born in December 2005 from the Menéame source code, inspired by Digg, Pligg has rapidly gained popularity and could easily be named the revelation of 2006. Pligg has released its beta 9 version in December 2006.

Just a concluding remark: these stats don’t make any claim of scientific accuracy, they are just intended to entertain our readers. I hope I have entertained you, and I wish you all the best for 2007!

In the Most linked CMS site and the Most visited CMS site stats I am using the term “CMS site”. Here I’ll try to explain what I mean and how I select a CMS site when more than one is available.

Sometimes there are two or more sites for a given CMS, e.g. the official site, plus maybe a support site, a fans site, a news site and so on. Since I am using the CMS site to count its incoming links, and the number of visits it receives, I’ll try to select the most linked and the most visited site as the “CMS site”. More accurately, that site could be called the “reference site” for the CMS it covers.

The site chosen as reference is always mentioned in the Links section of all posts related to that CMS.

Last Friday, for the first time since BlogsWeek.com maintains its Stats page, Joomla surpassed WordPress as Most visited CMS site. According to Alexa, who provides the data for this stat, Joomla! ranked as the 421st most popular site on the web, while WordPress held the 425th place on the same list.

Alexa computes its traffic rankings by evaluating two parameters, Reach and Page Views. While Reach reflects the number of users who visit that site, Page Views represent the number of pages on the site viewed by those users.

Actually more users are visiting WordPress, but Joomla! is receiving more page views. The composite result is that Joomla! is now the number one in our Most visited CMS site list.

WordPress keeps its first place in our other two stats, Powered by . . . and Most linked CMS homepage. Of course these stats don’t make any claim of scientific accuracy, they are just intended to entertain our readers.