I received a request the other day from someone interested in finding social networking-type resources focused on open source content management systems. A good question, and one that I thought might make a useful list of resources.
I did a bit of looking around at the larger networks and found the following. Please feel free to add your own faves using the comments function at the bottom of the article.
Facebook Groups
Perhaps not surprisingly, (given the wide range of interests on the site) Facebook includes quite a few groups concerned with Open Source CMS-related topics. There are quite a few fan sites for popular systems like Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress, but only a couple of groups that cut across lines and cover the category as a whole. Here’s a short list of the biggest and most active groups.
General Interest Groups
- All Users of CMS (members = 957)
- I Use a CMS (members = 274)
- Open Source CMS (members = 104)
Groups Focused on Specific Systems
- Drupal (members = 2,766)
- Drupal Theme (members = 368)
- Joomla (members = 5,484)
- WordPress (members = 2,467)
I was surprised at the strength and variety of Groups in action over at LinkedIn. A number of systems are the focus of various groups, with Magento showing a large following.
General Interest Groups
- CMS User Group (members = 957)
Groups Focused on Specific Systems
- Drupal (members = 2,321)
- Drupal Users Group (members = 908)
- Joomla Professional Users Group (members = 1,414)
- Joomla CMS (members = 489)
- Magento Users Group (members = 1,099)
- WordPress (members = 915)
MySpace Groups
Despite the size and vitality of MySpace, there is very little group activity focused on the Open Source CMS space. I guess they just can’t be bothered…
General Interest Groups
- CMS Groupies (members = 12)
Groups Focused on Specific Systems
- Joomla (Joomies) (members = 44)
Orkut
Orkut has a very active user base with a large number of relevant groups. While the vast majority of the groups are focused on specific systems, there are a couple of nascent general interest groups.
General Interest Groups
- I Use an Open Source CMS (members = 3)
- Open Source CMS (members = 3)
Groups Focused on Specific Systems
- Drupal (members = 354)
- Drupal Development (members = 165)
- Joomla (members = 900)
- Joomla and Website Development (members = 813)
- WordPress (members = 612)
Scribd Groups
Scribd provides a social document sharing site. People upload documents, white papers, sample book chapters, etc. Here I list both the size of the group membership as well as the number of documents in the group.
General Interest Groups
- Open Source CMS (members = 63; documents = 67)
Groups Focused on Specific Systems
Several of the open source CMS projects have their own Twitter accounts, here’s a quick list of the most active ones:
- DotNetNuke (Official?)
- Drupal (Official Site?)
- Joomla (Official Site)
- Magento (Official Site)
- Mia (Official Site)
- OpenCMS (Official Site)
- Plone (Official Site)
- WordPress (Official?)