Content Management Matters ™

Webware, C|Net's Web 2.0 blog-monkey, has launched the second annual Webware 100 poll. There are awards and there are awards, but popular voting awards under the C|Net banner are worth noticing. With half a million votes from Web users last time around, we will watch developments here with interest.

There is a wide range of categories to vote in including Audio, Browsing, Productivity and Video; but the battles we are primarily interested in will be conducted in the "Publishing and Photography" category.

So you're in the web provision game, and you're too much of a big shot to use WordPress, right?
If you're doing multi-user, community-based, advanced website features then I can understand that. For a pretty-boy website and a heavily branded product, you don't want WordPress. If you're building the next Facebook, or setting up a web solution for The New York Times, this is not the tool you need.

But if you are doing a bit of blogging and want to put in a few ads here and there, or run a newsletter, a RSS feed, a poll and an occasional blogcast, then WordPress is perfect.
It's low-maintenance, set-up is quick, updating and customizing is a snap, and non-techies will find the back-end content management intuitive and hassle-free.

But the best thing about WordPress, as everyone knows, is the sheer weight and quality of plugins to extend this cuddly Micro CMS. Here's a few of the best.

The rumors are true: comment box-modding is now an industry.

JS-Kit has just released a new Comments widget that boasts lots of important features but is disturbingly easy to implement and use. (Seriously. Try it here.)

At no cost and with no advertising, users of JS-Kit Comments can:

• Monitor threads
• Create RSS data feeds to track comments. This also empowers search engines to index them
• Sort comments based on name, date and "karma" (based on user votes)

The feature doesn't cause laggage and comments materialize instantly, even without the whole-page twitch that typically happens when a site is over-AJAXed.

After trying out Comments we started checking out JS-Kit's other widgets. They include, Ratings, Top Rated and Polls -- all sound CRM tools with a professional veneer. Just pop the HTML into your site.

It's amateur-easy.