Packt is pleased to announce the launch date of the 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award as Monday July 16. Following on from the success of last year, Packt has expanded the Award for 2007 with an increase in prize money and the addition of new categories.

As many of you know, Joomla! won the award last year and there is no doubt that community support through voting was a significant factor in our success. Fingers crossed, you guys can help us win again!

The 2006 Open Source CMS Award was designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an open source Content Management System (CMS) selected by a panel of judges and visitors to PacktPub.com. Following 72 nominations and 15,000 votes, Joomla! was eventually declared the winner. The 2007 Award will continue to support open source Content Management Systems and in order to reward more than one project, Packt has developed new categories for a wider variety of CMS’s to benefit from.

These are broken down into five different categories including the overall winner and the most promising Open Source CMS:

• Overall Winner
• Most Promising Open Source CMS
• Best Open Source PHP CMS
• Best Other Open Source CMS
• Best Social Networking CMS

The Award fund for 2007 has doubled, with $20,000 divided amongst the five winners. The overall winner will receive $5,000, with second and third places receiving $3,000 and $2,000 respectively. The most promising Open Source CMS will receive $2,000 with two runners up each receiving $1,000. The winners of the remaining three categories will each be awarded $2,000.

The first stage of the Award is nominations, which begin on July 16. This is open for visitors to PacktPub.com to submit their choice of Open Source Content Management System that they would like to go through to the final stage. The CMS’s that receive the most votes in their category will go through to the final stage, which starts in September.