The Great Backyard Plone Count Redux

Back in 2015 when I last wrote an entry in this blog, Plone 5 had just rolled out.  Retired from Sandia National Laboratories, I wound down my IT work and dusted off my old ecology degrees.  I started volunteering at our local BioPark Botanic Garden.  I thought I had escaped, but the lure of legacy software systems pulled me back into part-time consulting.  

This past weekend our venerable Plone 5 server with its bespoke Multi-Conference System was finally retired.  It's been replace by an up-to-date Plone 6 virtual server that provides EasyForm delivery.  With that (plus it's a raw, windy day outside), I'm inspired to take a look at how Plone in general is holding up.  

First off, Plone is doing better than cmsmatrix.org, my standby for CMS comparison.  They've gone by the wayside.  For 7 years I had turned to CMS Matrix for statistics, especially on the weekend of the Great Backyard Bird Count.  I would take inspiration from Cornell Labs yearly bird count to make an annual census of Plone sites.  

Now, after an 11-year pause, I'm looking at the stats again.  Fortunately, other more modern tools have popped up to replace CMS Matrix.  Builtwith immediately jumps to the forefront with informative graphics and easy to understand tabular summaries.  

The above graph shows the past 22 years of Plone usage as they have determined it.  The top line comes in at 7271 sites as of January 31st of this year.  This is lower than the golden age of Plone, 2012-2019, but still respectful.  Also, last year's release of Plone 6 definitely reversed a slow downward trend.  

I'm looking forward to how this continues into 2026.  With anti-US feelings becoming manifest across much of the world, there's talk of divesting IT systems of US-centric products and moving to open source solutions.  I sense an opportunity to plug those holes with Plone.