(AARHUS, DENMARK: jboye08) You’ve seen American Idol, and perhaps even the brutally awful version from Canada, Denmark, the UK and others… and now there’s Web Idol, for CMS vendors.

 

A fast-paced, entertaining set of competitive demos alla American Idol. Five CMS vendors present 7-minute demos showing the best features of their CMS systems. Five succinct, comparative presentations are judged by an expert panel of judges that offer pithy commentary. However, like Idol, the audience vote for the winner!
 

This year’s judges:

 

eZ systems is the defending champ from both Web Idol 2006 and Web Idol 2007 and faced easy competition.

 

This year’s competitor’s:

 

  • e-Spirit
  • eZ Systems
  • Hippo
  • SDL Tridion
  • Sitecore

 

The presentations:

 

  1. Sitecore led-off and did competently in the 7-minutes provide for the demo. I like the insite editing alla Red Dot. The ciritcs were fair, but critical.

 

  1. SDLTridion followed and was… confusing. I like the on-page AJAX driven editing without having to load multiple windows. I like the Tridion folks, but the critics were harsh.

 

  1. Open-source CMS Hippo was next-up. More focused, I like the drag-and-drop AJAX interface under user management. I don’t like the lack of in-site editing – it’s the 21st century. To quote Tony Byrne, “…like a hippo it’s (the CMS) potentially fatal to humans.” Overall, the judges appear to like Hippo best… thus far.

 

  1. eZ ran in 4th. The two-time defending champ and open-source CMS led with a very smart demo site that included advertising and lots of multimedia, and even Google maps. I like the integration of commenting and Web 2.0 with the in-site (in-context) editing. The judges seem confused and uncommitted.

 

  1. e-Spirit in the anchor position had a very competent, but lightning-fast confusing demo. The presenter was very quick and the system seems quite capable… but drab. The speed of the demo confused me greatly… I couldn’t follow what he was doing or why. Unlike the other vendors, e-Spirit finishes early… but I’m confused. I shall not be casting my vote for e-Spirit. The judges also seem confused.

 

Tony was a very good judge with some very good remarks, analysis, and quite funny. Erik and Claudia however looked and sounded lost… Where have all the good judges gone?

 

VOTING

 

Remember, like Idol, this is not comparative analysis of which CMS is best, it’s a popularity contest based on a lightning fast demo. The winner is voted on by the audience. I voted for eZ Systems. I like the AJAX, multimedia and Web 2.0. The demo site was nice and progressive.

 

The audience cast their votes…. And the winner is…Denmark-based Sitecore (1st time winner).