I do Drupal for a living and I like the system. However I've always been intrigued by Plone and wanted to learn it well to broad base my knowledge of CMSes in general. I've played around with Plone in the past and was both mesmerized and repulsed by it -- depending on the day.

But then again here is what I saw as the advantages of Plone

• Python sweet Python
• Built on battle hardened and uber mature Zope 2
• Zope 3 style which is now available in Zope 2 also and therefore in Plone
• Objects and not SQL
• True separation of configuration and content (unlike Drupal where configuration and content is totally mixed up in the database)
• Very powerful system to make custom content types (unfortunately not via a UI)

However it surprised me that there was nothing that I could find equivalent to views ( http://drupal.org/project/views ) and that taxonomy (i.e. classification) was not a first class citizen. Every Plone product seemed to take its own approach to taxonomy. All in all, though I loved its extreme and idealistic approach, it always struck me that everything was so darn difficult to accomplish in it.

I've really been hoping for Plone to succeed and every few months will explore its RSS feeds only to go back dejected.

I thought I'd test out Plone 4. The new feature list in Plone 4 was totally underwhelming to me ( http://plone.org/products/plone/features ).

Drupal 7 new features ( http://drupalcode.org/viewvc/drupal/drupal/CHANGELOG.txt?revision=1.373&view=markup) and Wordpress 3 ( http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0 ) seem to have done tons more in their new major releases.

Moreover replacement to Archetypes through Dexterity ( http://plone.org/products/dexterity/documentation/faq/how-is-dexterity-related-to-archetypes/view ) is also a great step forward. So while Plone 4 itself may be an improvement over 3.x is it enough to keep Plone in the reckoning amongst other CMSes?

Which brings me to my question:

Is Plone on a steady decline? Whats the future of Plone? Am I wrong in my assessment that Plone is not adding functionality and features at the rate other top tier CMSes are?

This http://www.google.com/trends?q=plone seems to confirm my fears.

Should I give Plone 4 a try and make it my "second" CMS?