Social Web CMS has certainly matured very nicely since it was launched last year and in our opinion at the time of writing is possibly the best solution to start your own digg clone type website. So why would we recommend Social Web CMS over it’s competition like Pligg and Drigg, simple it’s easy to use and unlike Pligg has effective spam protection.

Whilst Pligg are close to releasing v1.0 Final of there system we believe Social Web CMS has the upper hand for many reasons, the largest being a development team that listen to feedback, have a clear development plan only creating features and modules that add real value to the Social Web CMS system. Pligg on the other hand do not seem to have any type of development plan and if they do it has never been openly spoken about or published by Pliggs owners, also any sort of project transparency would seem to be a non existent entity with Pligg.

Drigg has also had it’s share of bad news recently with Tony Mobily it’s creator announcing his decision to leave Drupal development altogether back in Feburary of this year.

So how exactly have Social Web CMS managed to outshine there established rivals in the social news/bookmarking marketplace in such a short time, easy they have great developers like Damon Wirth aka AshDigg (Pliggs Original Creator) and Nick Ramsey that pay detailed attention to any feedback their user base suggest.

One of the major problems both Pligg and Social Web CMS have faced is that of Spam story and comment submission. Whilst Pligg has done nothing to combat these type of submissions Social Web CMS on the other hand have been working hard developing modules which eliminate the spam threat completely, yes we did say completely.

The first module to eradicate spam that Social Web CMS released was titled “Submission Approval Module” which eliminates rouge submissions from your Social Web CMS install.

This module puts submissions from a new user into moderation, and notifies the administrator via email (and a “pending” section in Admin) that there are stories awaiting approval. If the administrator approves one of the stories then any future submissions by that user go straight to “upcoming” without needing approval first.

The second spam deterrent is for comments that have been submitted and is titled “Comment Approval Module“.

Puts comments from a new user into moderation, and notifies the administrator via email and a “pending” section in Admin.

How it works
- The comment form shows the message “Please note that comment moderation is enabled” for users with no previously approved comments.
- When that user submits a comment, it doesn’t appear. However, the comment with approve/delete links is sent to ‘god’ or ‘admin’ users via email.
- ‘god’ users can set where they want the email notification to go through the Admin panel.
- The approve/delete links in the email (also shown on pending comments listed in Admin) perform the action in one step – no confirmation step!
- ‘admin’ users can moderate comments, but are not shown the email notification settings. Only ‘god’ users see those.

Both of these modules combined provide you at last with a system that is completely spam free, something which Social Web CMS’s main competitor pligg cannot currently offer it’s frustrated users.

It doesn’t end there however as we mention earlier in the article Social Web CMS have a detailed Roadmap Development plan for the system which you can read here Social Web CMS Roadmap. As you can see many improvements that users have been asking for both at Social Web CMS and at Pligg have been included in the development schedule.

With all these improvements and many more coming it’s hard to see how other systems can compete with Social Web CMS, therefore if you are thinking about starting a social news digg clone type website Social Web CMS should be a system you seriously consider. With established sites like Tip’d already usuing Social Web CMS the system has been proven stable and scalable so it definitley gets our vote as to speak.