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CMS Landscape

Introduction

How does Tiki compare to the hundredsQuestion of Open Source CMS SystemsQuestion?

People often ask us this. Ideally, to answer this question we'd need people with intimate knowledge of several systems. This tends to be pretty rare because once you get to know a versatile tool like Drupal, Joomla!, Plone or Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware you can pretty much do everything you need with it (or you can certainly bend it to your needs). "He who works with a hammer thinks everything is a nail"Question.

The other frequent question is "Which one is better?". Really the answer is "it depends" on what you are trying to do. However, with the wiki-powered collective intelligence we should be able to get some better, more detailed answers. 😉

You'll also be interested in SMACKDOWN :: Who are the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) market leaders in 2008?Question which comments on the comprehensive 2008 Open Source CMS Market Share SurveyQuestion. This survey outlines well the challenges of trying to measure popularity by number of downloads or number of installs. This could, of course, be very interesting, but how do you count the number of installs behind the corporate firewalls? Also, many applications offer each module/feature/extension/language pack/theme as a separate download (where as Tiki bundles everything in one large download). So to be more accurate, you'd have to try to measure the number of "core" downloads, adding complexity and subjectiveness.

Notwithstanding these challenges, this chart below has an angle of comparing activity level / size of the community which is just one thing to look at. It is not a side-by-side comparison of features (which would be nice if done like www.wikimatrix.orgQuestion). It is also a way for the Tiki community to identifies area to improve upon.

Tiki strives to be the best possible system and yet still be installable on cheap shared LAMPQuestion hosting. However, it has many features from so called enterprise systems. Tiki is somewhat a strange animal as it shares the Corporate WikiQuestion space with TWiki, shares the CMSQuestion space with Typo3 and shares the groupwareQuestion space with egroupware.

What is the future of a wiki-centric system? see for yourself!Question

Comparison chart

Criteria Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware Joomla!Question DrupalQuestion PloneQuestion Typo3Question ImpressCMSQuestion (Xoops fork) XoopsQuestion eZpublishQuestion WordPressQuestion e107Question DotNetNukeQuestion SPIPQuestion
Number of committers 186Question 53Question 29Question/2126Question 64 (error?)Question 51Question 45Question 28Question 89Question 19Question 21Question ?Question 23Question
Ohloh stacksQuestion 39Question 169Question 227Question 97Question 63Question 23Question 25Question 31Question 317Question 8Question 7Question 15Question
IRC chat room size (freenode) 32 80 248 132 40 5 (must use something else) 2 (must use something else) 18 141 27 0 (must use something else) 35
Facebook group 152Question 1628Question 1755Question 271Question 213Question 54Question 89Question 88Question 1484Question 35Question 195Question 103Question
CIA activity (August 2009 2008) 728Question 1207Question ?Question 151Question 133Question
SSC toolbox 12Question 25Question 81Question 28Question 2Question 2Question 0Question 0Question 79Question 0Question 0Question 1Question
Freshmeat Rating / PopularityQuestion 8.70/10 (134) / 21.48% (45)Question 8.83/10 (N/A) / 2.44% (1994)Question 8.41/10 (317) / 8.38% (317)Question 8.07/10 (367) / 7.38% (380)Question 8.58/10 (239) / 5.47% (598)Question 8.62/10 (N/A) / 0.17% (26765)Question 8.26/10 (N/A) / 2.75% (1691)Question 7.97/10 (371) / 13.70% (113)Question 8.72/10 (N/A) / 7.31% (385)Question 8.65/10 (N/A) / 1.12% (5062) 8.89/10 (N/A) / 1.40% (3932)Question
SourceForge activity level clickQuestion clickQuestion clickQuestion clickQuestion clickQuestion
LOCs Over 1 million
Downloads 6000-9000/monthQuestion 1000/month
Criteria Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware Joomla! Drupal Plone Typo3 ImpressCMS (Xoops fork) Xoops eZpublish WordPress e107 DotNetNuke SPIP
Installs tens of thousandsQuestion millions new project
Printed documentation 960 pagesQuestion 41 books in print 19 books in print 7 book in print 17 book new project 8 books in print
Started 2002 2008
Events small many huge yes not yet manyQuestion
License LGPL GPL GPL GPL GPL GPL GPL GPL & proprietaryQuestion GPL GPL BSD-style GPL
Community project or Open-sourced by a company Community CommunityQuestion Community Community Community Community Community eZ SystemsQuestion AutomatticQuestion Community DotNetNuke CorporationQuestion Community
Language PHP PHP PHP Python PHP PHP PHP PHP PHP PHP ASP PHP
Coding style Simple with community coding as a design choiceQuestion Object-oriented Object-oriented
Template engine Smarty Smarty Smarty
Other applied for openID bountyQuestion in Oct 2007 awaiting verdict awarded openID bountyQuestion awarded openID bountyQuestion awarded openID bountyQuestion
2007 EContent 100 ListQuestion yes no yes yes yes no no yes yes no no no
2008 EContent 100 ListQuestion no yes yes yes no no no no yes no no no
GSOC 2008Question no yes yes yes no no no no yes no no no
GSOC 2009Question yes yes yes yes yes no no no yes no no no
Fantastico shared hostingQuestion yes yes yes no yes no yes no yes no no no
Included in 2008 Open Source CMS Market Share SurveyQuestion yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes no yes
Included in 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share SurveyQuestion yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes no
AlexaQuestion 45,761Question 4,319Question 7,913Question 63,091Question 121,438Question 47,272Question 70,678Question 55,900Question 3,275Question 41,536Question 44,196Question 145,261Question
Eats own's dogfood as a wiki?Question yes uses MediaWikiQuestion Added to Plone 3Question uses MediaWikiQuestion uses MediaWikiQuestion integrated MediaWikiQuestion uses MediaWikiQuestion uses MediaWikiQuestion
Eats own's dogfood as a bug tracker?Question yes uses GForgeQuestion yesQuestion uses TracQuestion uses MantisQuestion uses SourceForge.netQuestion uses SourceForge.net for coreQuestion and XOOPS Module Development Forge for modules yesQuestion uses TracQuestion yesQuestion uses TracQuestion


This chart highlights some of the differences with other projects.

Opinions

Marc Laporte wrote:

1- I see the landscape as more of a "big 4" which includes Plone. If I had to limit to three (and there is no reason to do so), I'd put WordPress with the more specialized systems like MediaWiki. However, with all the plugins, you can do quite a bit with WordPress, thus it fits as a CMS. On the other end, Plone has higher entry level (hosting requirements, etc.) than PHP systems but nonetheless has a huge & active developer communityQuestion.

2- I don't see why the great success of the top systems would have such an effect on all other systems (certainly not in absolute terms). History may show that rapid growth by the leading systems grew the field for all and in fact, accelerated the development of the others (again, in absolute terms).

Similarly, the success of Wikipedia/Mediawiki has been a great thing for Tiki and for other wiki engines like DokuWiki, MoinMoin, Twiki, xwiki, etc. because it has brought wikis to the masses. When systems like Drupal/Joomla!/Wordpress get coverage in the mass media, it increases the space. I think the overall usage of Open Source Applications is growing and it is not about to slow down!

My prediction is that Tiki will continue improving in user base, functionality and stability very much like it has over the last 5 years. Even if Drupal and Joomla! are overall several times larger, Tiki is one of the largest open-source teams in the world and is in the top 2% of all project teams on OhlohQuestion. This is more than enough to sustain a great community, improve the application and to benefit from the Network effectQuestion.

So go! go! go! Drupal, Joomla!, MediaWiki, etc. 😊

General CMS systems

Big 4

In general, with focus on size of the community

2nd tier

In general with focus on size of the community

Who else is in 2nd tier?

Specialized

These are very popular projects but are typically single focus.

Wikis

Wiki Landscape

Other notes

Lists


GV: My suggestions will be written in red

Todo

  1. Find cleaner way to maintain data
    • web services?
    • Nicer table/chart
      • Double click editing?
      • Sorting
      • Swap X & Y axis
      • Perhaps a tracker
  2. Split into 4 charts (with TW stats contained in a all)
    • Big 3/4
    • Other popular CMSs (low hosting requirements)
    • Other wikis Wiki Landscape
    • Other popular Web applications (high hosting requirements)


More Stats


Page last modified on Thursday 20 August 2026 11:22:50 UTC