Best of Opensource.com: Top 20 articles of the year

In 2016, Opensource.com published more than 1,000 articles and welcomed more than 200 first-time contributors to our community. Our community moderators continued helping lead the direction for our site, and they contributed about 30% of our content.

This year we launched six new monthly columns:

• Community Metrics Playbook
• Nooks and Crannies
• Open Music
• Opening Up Education
• The Queue

In 2015, Opensource.com attracted more than 7-million page views and 4.6-million unique visits. This year, the site received more than 10-million page views and more than 5.5-million unique visitors. Containers, OpenStack, Raspberry Pi, and programming articles remained popular topics on Opensource.com, and 3D printing and IoT articles were also crowd pleasers. Readers also loved our articles featuring open source alternatives, many of which made our top 20 list.

Top 20 open source stories in 2016

1. Top 11 project management tools for 2016 by Robin Muilwijk (Community Moderator)
2. Top 6 open source CRM tools for 2016 by Scott Nesbitt(Community Moderator)
3. Top 4 open source issue tracking tools by Jason Baker (Red Hat)
4. 5 open source home automation tools by Jason Baker
5. 9 open source alternatives to Picasa by Jason Baker
6. 4 open source tools for Linux system monitoring by David Both (Community Moderator)
7. 4 open source alternatives to Dreamweaver by Jason Baker
8. How to choose a PHP framework by Dr. Michael J. Garbade
9. Open source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for PDFs by Jason Baker
10. Firewall your home network with a Raspberry Pi by David Both
11. Top 10 Raspberry Pi add-on boards by Ben Nuttall (Columnist)
12. 3 open source alternatives to AutoCAD by Jason Baker
13. Turn your old Raspberry Pi into an automatic backup server by Seth Kenlon (Community Moderator)
14. Top 7 open source business intelligence and reporting tools by Robin Muilwijk
15. 5 open source alternatives to Gmail by Jason Baker
16. How to set up a Linux-based music server at home by Chris Hermansen (Columnist)
17. 3 open source personal finance tools for Linux by Jason Baker
18. Top 5 open source command shells for Linux by Jason Baker
19. 4 open source alternatives to Slack for team chat by Jason Baker
20. Raspberry Pi 3 rolls out with faster CPU, on-board Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth by Ben Nuttall

More top hits

Here are 10 more hits that made it onto our list of Top 50 articles for the year:

1. Why I built my own homebrew Linux router by Jim Salter
2. 11 resources for teaching and learning Python by Brian Hall
3. Python vs. C/C++ in embedded systems by Tom Radcliffe
4. Which Raspberry Pi should you choose for your project? by Ben Nuttall
5. An introduction to Linux filesystems by David Both
6. Hands-on with the Linux-ready Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition by Anderson Silva (Red Hat)
7. One man's trash is another man's Linux computer by Drew Kwashnak
8. NY bill would provide tax credit for open source contributors by Ben Cotton (Community Moderator)
9. Hacking your Linux computer for a better listening experience by Chris Hermansen
10. Cluster computing on the Raspberry Pi with Kubernetes by Kurt Stam

What were your favorite open source highlights from 2016? What topics do you want to make sure we cover in 2017? Let us know about them in the comments below, or email your suggestions to the editors at open@opensource.com.