Today I found a great resource documenting Functional Requirements for Community-Oriented Software and Technologies. Go to the web page and click on the HTML button, or the small “x” button next to it. I may come back and review this document again later in a discussion of evaluating and rating alternatives, but I didn’t want to wait in terms of sharing the resource.
For anyone trying to search out and evaluate community-oriented software, this looks like a useful resource. It is an Excel spreadsheet identifying a series of functional requirements broken out in groups. It include detail functions which can be measured against candidate solutions. It is dated and identifies itself to be a work-in-progress, but it has a nice list of things to think about and evaluate already included in the document.
Another resource that I’ve known about for some time and which I used in my own process can be found at idealware. They are “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, provid[ing] thoroughly researched, impartial and accessible resources about software to help nonprofits make smart software decisions.” They publish a nice report comparing WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Plone for use by non-profit organizations. Their report includes evaluations of systems in key areas and includes ratings in terms of how well each software system performs: none, fair, solid or excellent. They update the report periodically to keep it fresh and up to date.