I've just updated this site to use a new skin designed by Joe Davis of http://i7media.net/i7MEDIA. I wasn't really dissatisfied with the previous design in general, it was pretty decent and in some ways it makes me a little sad to change from what had become so familiar to me. But the new design seems very clean and there is a lot of attention to detail that really looks professional and I think in some cases the new design improves the usability of the site.

The menu structure is very nice and one of the most striking elements of the design. But the usability improvements are the result of making things stand out more. For example people hardly seemed to notice the forum descriptions and posting guidelines in the old design. It is right there on the page but somehow it often goes un-noticed because it doesn't grab your attention, so the result is that people often post questions in the wrong forum or leave out information that is expected to be included. With the new design, the forum description/instructions really stand out and I anticipate it will be noticed better than with the old design. Notice also the nice attention to detail for the pager link styles.

New Design Forums

Old Design Forums

Similarly, on our search page there has always been a little help link that people could click to learn how to do more advanced searching, but in the old design hardly anyone ever noticed it. Whereas again in the new design it really jumps out and I anticipate more people will click the help link and will have better luck searching once they know the tips from the help.

New Design Search

Old Design Search

A huge thanks goes out to Joe Davis for his hard work on this design! Joe is also working on a variation on this design but with a different color scheme that we will ship with a future release of mojoPortal.

What do you think? Do you like the new design better than the old one?

Please also let us know if you notice any pages on this site that don't look right with the new design, we are still tweaking a few things here and there.

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A big shout of thanks to the mojoPortal Community!

Thanks to your nominations, mojoPortal is a finalist in the 2010 Open Source Awards in the CMS Category.

Now the voting phase has begun and we need your vote! The voting phase goes from September 27, 2010 until November 5, 2010. Please take a moment and vote for mojoPortal! By voting, you also get a chance to win an Amazon Kindle.

https://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home/vote-open-source-cms

The competition is always tough in these awards, so every vote is important. We really need your vote!

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I'm very gratified to announce that mojoPortal has won 3rd place in the 2009 CMS Awards by Packt Publishing, in the Non-PHP category. It is particularly exciting that mojoPortal was the only .NET based CMS to place this year, nudging out DotNetNuke in the Best Other category.

Plone, a Python based CMS retained their crown from last year, and dotCMS, a java based CMS took second place.

In 2007, the first year of the contest, mojoPortal actually won this category over the more established Plone, but we were the only .NET CMS among the contenders that year. In 2008 there were several other .NET projects in the mix and though we were a finalist in the Best Other category, DotNetNuke took 3rd place both in the Best Other and Best Overall Category. This year, after the nomination phase, DotNetNuke was a finalist again in both the Best Overall and Best Other categories and mojoPortal only made the finalists in the Best Other Category, so it seemed like they had already placed ahead of us again this year, but in the end we prevailed against the odds. 

It is a very competitive field and all the contending projects certainly deserve respect. While some have criticized the contest as being merely a popularity contest, I can't really say it seems that way to me. While mojoPortal's popularity is growing rapidly, we are still much less known than many of the projects in the competition. Certainly we were an underdog and no-where near as popular as Plone in 2007 when we won first place in the non-PHP category, and DotNetNuke clearly has a much larger user base, better brand recognition, and more marketing muscle backed by venture capital. So obviously there is more than vote counting going on. It would be nice if the judges post their individual analysis, at least one has already posted some notes about his impressions of the contenders and I know some of the other judges are planning to do the same.

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Hey mojoPortal friends, tomorrow (October 30, 2009) is the last day of voting in the 2009 CMS Awards by Packt Publishing.

If you haven't already voted please vote, we need your support!

Results wil be announced on November 10.

I'm happy to announce that thanks to your nominations, mojoPortal is a Finalist in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award sponsored by Packt Publishing.

So now we are in the voting stage and we need your vote. Don't be confused and think you already voted, that was just the nomination phase.

The Voting Stage ends on October 30, 2009 and winners will be announced on November 9, 2009, so please vote today. The award will be decided partly by voting and partly by judges who will vote based on their own evaluations.

We are competing for the "Best Other Open Source CMS Award", where "Other" means non-PHP technology. We won this category in 2007 and were a finalist in 2008. mojoPortal has improved so much over the last 2 years that I hope we can do well again this year, but to the extent that voting is involved its an uphill battle competing against projects with larger communities who may be able to generate more votes. So I hope you all will take a minute to cast your vote.